by Anne Emery
It was easier for me. I knew all these people but, after three years as a member of the RCMP in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, I was still a CFA, a come-from-away. Don’t get me wrong; I have always been accepted here and welcomed, except by the vauriens — the good-for-nothings — I pick up and arrest in the course of my duties, and I’d say I’m accepted even by many of those. Not too many taunts of “Frenchie” here, let alone any other slurs. There are French-speaking areas of Cape Breton — Chéticamp and Isle Madame, to name two of them — but I’m not from here. I’m from Moncton, New Brunswick. Don’t let the “Maguire” fool you. My great-grandfather came from Ireland, but he married an Acadian girl, and we’ve all been French speakers ever since. There are a lot of people like me in this country, in New Brunswick and Quebec, with French and Irish names. My best buddy on the force is Patrick Tremblay. Same thing with him, but at least his family celebrates Saint Patrick’s Day as well as our Acadian fête nationale on August 15. He’s serving in Shediac, New Brunswick, now. My plan was to travel up there to join him for the August festivities, schedule permitting.
I graduated from the Université de Moncton with a degree in science, applied to the RCMP, was accepted, did my training at the depot in Saskatchewan, spent a year on the force in Manitoba, and then was transferred to Montreal, where I spent nearly fifteen years before moving to Cape Breton. Anyway, there I was in Kinlochiel, with Dougald MacDougald. We were having the argument all over again, this time while we sat in our unmarked car overlooking Lac Bras d’Or drinking our Tims. This time the subject of our debate was Collie MacDonald.
“He wouldn’t hurt her in a million years, Pierre. It’s not in him.”
“It’s in all of us. You know that. Most people will never commit a crime like this, or any crime at all. But under the right — or the wrong — circumstances, under pressure, under who knows what, any of us can snap.”
“But what kind of pressure, what circumstances, would make a guy like Collie MacDonald suddenly kidnap his own daughter out of the blue?”
“You said it right there: suddenly. Maybe he didn’t plan it. He just snapped that night and grabbed her. His wife dumped him years ago, hooked up with Andy Campbell, married him, and took the kids with her. Collie is a drinker. He got bien saoul one night, started brooding about his troubles, and snatched the child. Maybe there was an argument, and he hit or pushed her. She banged her head on something. Collie panicked and didn’t know what to do.”
Dougald had a sip of his double-double, then put the coffee cup in the holder, and started the car. “There’s been trouble in that family, not just with Collie.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Some kind of spat between the various MacDonald families in the band.”
“They are all brothers and sisters, but there are in-laws involved and that may be where the conflict began.”
“So, what started all that? These are close families, from what I know of them.”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard it’s about money. I’ve also heard it’s about personal stuff. Jealousies, the usual. But thank God it hasn’t split the band up.”
Dougald wasn’t any happier about questioning Andy Campbell than he was about questioning Collie, but a stepfather flashes even brighter on our radar than a natural father in cases like this.
The father and stepfather were of course only two of the dozens of people we questioned after Bonnie was reported missing. We had tasked a couple of our younger members with the job of checking into any groupies or obsessive fans of the band. You never know with hangers-on like that. So we were waiting for that report. Dougald and I spoke to everybody who had attended the party on the night of July 15. There were fifty-two people in all at the party between the two houses. Adults and kids. One was Bonnie herself, so that left fifty-one. Six of those were babies or toddlers or very young children. We talked to everybody else.
Nobody had noticed anything unusual about Bonnie. She was her normal self. Did not appear to be worried about anything. She played games with her cousins and the other kids, sang along with some of the music being played, did a bit of step dancing. Nobody saw her leave the party. The fact that the festivities were divided between two different houses didn’t help us any, but nobody even remembered her saying she was leaving one place for the other. There were no strangers or new people at the wingding, and nobody saw any new faces hanging around in the vicinity of the houses.
In other words, we got very little information out of the last persons to lay eyes on Bonnie MacDonald.
One of them, her cousin Cindy, ten years of age, had something to say about timing. “I remember the last time I saw Bonnie that night because of my dad. He makes the same joke when he looks at the clock. He was trying to get us kids to say goodnight to everyone and go home because it was getting late for the little ones. I have two brothers who are seven and five. So anyway, Dad looked at his watch. It’s one of those new ones that don’t have a clock face, just the numbers printed out. It said eleven eleven. ‘That’s a magic number,’ he told the little kids. ‘Every time I see eleven eleven, I make a wish. And it comes true every time!’ And the little kids heard this and their eyes were bugging out staring at him. And one of them asked, ‘What kind of wish came true?’ And my dad said, ‘I always wish it will be eleven twelve, and it always happens!’ And they all laughed.” Young Cindy rolled her eyes because she had heard it so many times from her father. “Bonnie was still there, at Mary Reid’s. I remember her laughing and saying to my dad, ‘Good one!’”
So that gave us a bit of information anyway. Bonnie was still at Mary Reid’s house at eleven eleven p.m. Nobody had anything to report about her after that. Andy and Sharon had already left, thinking Bonnie was with her cousin Louise.
Then there was the piss-drunk boyfriend. All the adults were into it to some extent, but they weren’t out of their minds on booze because of the children present. Except for this young fellow, Billy MacPherson. He was dating one of the daughters of Red Archie Drummond. Candace. To all reports, Billy was stumbling around and slurring his words and asking the girls to dance. They all said no, with the exception of Bonnie, who said, “Sure, Billy. I’ll do a step dance on your head!” And everybody laughed. But then Billy said something idiotic, about looking up Bonnie’s kilt, and she gave him a dirty look and walked away. One of Bonnie’s many cousins, a big guy named Lou, heard the remark and marched over to Billy and said if he didn’t get out of the house he would rip his lungs out. At which point one of the aunts went over and told everybody just to ignore the young gomick because he was loaded drunk and didn’t know what he was saying. Candace, the girlfriend, was pissed off at Billy and was giving him the cold shoulder.
At that point, one of the other boyfriends at the party, Lee Kaulbeck, said he would get Billy out of there. Kaulbeck goes out with Nancy Campbell, Andy’s daughter from his first marriage. Kaulbeck was known to us, not in the sense of “known to police,” but known as a paramedic and ambulance driver stationed in Sydney. It was his night off but he would never drink and drive, because losing his licence would mean losing his job. So he offered to drive Billy home and let him sleep it off. He talked the young fellow out of the house and into his car and got him safely home to the family farm about two miles away. When Lee got back, he said Billy told him to apologize to everyone at the party, especially Bonnie. So Lee went looking for Bonnie but, by that time, Bonnie wasn’t there. Everyone assumed she had gone over to the other party. Billy’s father, Willie John Will MacPherson, phoned and said he was sorry about how his son had acted, and that he wasn’t used to drinking that much. That brought about a few “Yeah, sure” comments, but everyone appreciated Willie John Will’s call.
Then we got another break. Vernon MacLellan has the only video rental business in Kinlochiel. Two days after the disappearance he called us to come and look at an image captured by his CCTV. It records the images. MacLellan said there had been some thefts f
rom the store, movies being shoplifted, so somebody advised him to set up a CCTV camera in the shop and also outside the front and back doors. He was going through the footage and, doux Jésus, what did he see but a girl who looked a lot like Bonnie MacDonald, walking with a man on the street in front of his store. Dougald and I dropped everything else and raced to the shop and looked at what he had.
The image was blurry, and was in black and white, but there was little doubt it was Bonnie. And she was hand in hand with a man. The damn machine didn’t capture the guy’s face, so all we had was him from the neck down.
MacLellan said, “That’s a man, for sure.”
“Almost certainly,” Dougald agreed.
It could have been a big woman, a tall one anyway, but I would have bet the farm it was a man. Anyone would. And the windbreaker he had on looked like a Clan Donnie jacket. Dougald told me the band had these jackets made up for the members and crew. And family members probably had them, too. As for Bonnie, she didn’t appear to be crying or trying to pull away. She was comfortable with the guy. At least, that was our take on it. Later, when we asked Bonnie’s mother Sharon about her height, we were able to determine that the guy beside her was around five foot ten to eleven inches tall. That description fit Collie MacDonald and Andy Campbell. But it fit a lot of other guys too. Or a woman in heels, for that matter. We couldn’t see the shoes.
Anyway, the CCTV image had a timestamp, and it said eleven thirty-eight. We knew Bonnie was still at the Reid house at eleven eleven p.m., so we had our twenty-seven-minute time period for her disappearance. We also knew that her mother and stepfather, Sharon and Andy, had left the party before eleven in order to get the younger kids home to bed. And that Collie had not been at the party.
Chapter II
Normie
A whole bunch of us were over at Nancy Campbell’s place. She is the daughter of Andy Campbell, from back before Andy married Sharon, so Nancy’s mum is somebody else, not Sharon. Nancy has the bottom half of an old lady’s big grey house in Kinlochiel. Nancy was taking turns playing the fiddle with a teenager I didn’t know, named Susie. Bonnie MacDonald’s little sister, Heather, was there too. She was there with Andy because he was taking her to a birthday party afterwards. They had stopped in so she could see everybody. My very first fiddle lesson was that morning with Mrs. Beaton, and she was really nice, even when I broke my string. I didn’t try to play at Nancy’s because I didn’t know enough yet. Nancy was a good fiddler, but she kept saying she was no good. She said her playing brought shame on the family, but she was only joking — Andy is a fiddling star. The rest of us told her to keep trying. She is really nice. She is older than a teenager, more like a grownup, and she is something important. A nurse, I think. She works at the hospital in Sydney. Her boyfriend was with her, Lee Kaulbeck. He’s older than her and he drives the ambulance. He didn’t try any fiddling. He said he had to leave, but he didn’t go. He just hung around watching the rest of us. Andy came over and gave us advice on how to play, and Lee said to him, “Good way to meet girls, eh, Andy?”
He must have been making a joke because Andy laughed and said, “Watch and learn, young man. Learn from the pro.”
Nancy went over to Lee and said, “You don’t have to stay and suffer through all the fiddle playing, Lee. Dad can drive me home when he takes Heather to the party.”
But Lee said to her, “Nah, if I’m going to stay in your good books, hon, I’d better get used to hearing fiddle music. Everywhere I go with you.”
It was Susie’s turn to play then, and she started a jig but it wasn’t all that good. She was really stiff the way she held the fiddle and the bow, so Andy stood behind her and put his hands on hers and tried to get her to relax and hold it right. “I’m such a klutz,” she said, but she was giggling.
Lee called out, “Hey, maestro, back off there.” He was talking to Andy. “This isn’t a contact sport.”
Andy answered, “Contact this, Kaulbeck,” and he went back to helping Susie get into the right position.
“Maybe Susie isn’t ready for this yet,” Lee said. “She had a bad fall when she was skating last winter. I remember taking her to the ER. Typically, they kept her waiting for three hours and then told her it was nothing but a contusion and sent her home. I suspected a non-displaced fracture of the olecranon, but that would have meant a radiograph, and those lazy shits weren’t going to get off their asses to do that.”
“You think she had a what?” Andy said, and you could tell he was trying not to laugh. But he would not have been laughing at Susie being hurt. I think he wanted to make fun of Lee for using all those big words.
“Yeah, I know, I spend too much time on the job and keep forgetting not everybody is a medical specialist.”
“You have to learn to leave your work behind you when your shift is over. And when you think about it, you don’t have the best name for a paramedic, eh, Lee? Somebody calls you in an emergency and you answer and say, ‘Kaulbeck,’ and the person hangs up and thinks he has to call back later.”
“Very amusing, Campbell. Anyway, to answer your question in layman’s language, I was saying Susie probably had a broken elbow and should have had an x-ray. Her ROM — range of motion — hasn’t been the same since.”
“I’m fine, Lee,” said Susie. “The only thing wrong with me is that I haven’t got the knack of fiddling yet!”
“Don’t worry, Suse, Doctor Andy will fix that for you. He’s at your beck and call.” That was Andy himself, and he took Susie’s arm and kind of wiggled it, and she looked up at him and smiled.
“Better already,” she said.
Lee got up to leave, and I saw him give kind of a weird look to Andy and Susie. I didn’t know what he meant, but Nancy saw it and gave a look back to Lee as if she was saying, “What’s the matter with you?”
But all he said was, “Places to go, people to save. See you tonight?”
“Yes, remember the square dance?”
“Square dance, right. Another thing none of my friends were doing in Halifax. Let’s just say that, whatever the people I hung out with were doing at two o’clock in the morning, it wasn’t square dancing.”
“Square dance tonight, step dance tomorrow. We’ll make a Caper of you yet, Lee.”
“If that’s what it takes to win your heart, my lovely lassie.”
“Ah, go on with you. See you later on.”
Lee left then, but somebody else arrived. A cousin of mine. Second cousin, really. John Rory is the son of Ian MacDonald, who is in the Clan Donnie band. John Rory lives in Ben Eoin but he takes fiddle lessons from Mrs. Beaton, too. He is fifteen and is big and has a nice face.
“Hey, Normie Ruadh!” he said when he came in.
“Hi, John Rory.” He has red hair like me, so I asked him, “How come they don’t call you Rory Ruadh?”
“Well, they do. That’s what Rory means. You know ruadh means red, and rì means king. There’s a million spellings, but never mind. Just remember this: I’m the Red King.”
“Oh! Well, if we were playing cards, you’d win!”
“I’d win, hands down. But you can be in my entourage!”
That’s a bunch of people who hang around Hollywood stars. And kings.
We flopped down on the carpet in the living room and sat with our legs crossed. We were the only ones in there. Everybody else was in the kitchen.
“So you’re here studying the fiddle, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I just started this morning.”
“And the Gaelic?”
“Yeah, I have to get to work on that. I’m not very good.”
“It’s tricky, but you’ll get it. Takes work but it’s in your blood.”
We talked a bit more about what music we knew and what grades we’d be going into and which teachers were known as crabby and which ones were nice and all that. And then of course we started tal
king about Bonnie.
I asked him, “Why do you think the cops haven’t found her yet? Or do you think they know where she is but they’re not telling anybody?”
“Nah.” John Rory shook his head. “They haven’t got a clue.”
“Or maybe they know there’s a guy who took her, but they just can’t find him yet.”
“They don’t know. I heard my parents talking. They said the Mounties investigated the idea that she might just have run away.”
“Would Bonnie do that?”
“No, I guess they asked around and they are almost sure she didn’t.”
“I wish she had. You know, that she had a fight with her parents and got mad and went away to make them feel bad. Then she could just come back when she wants.”
“Except she’s not the type to do that. She’s really close to her mum.”
“You know her really well,” I said. “Did the Mounties ask you any questions?”
“Yeah, they asked everybody, but we were a bunch of useless tools. Didn’t have anything to tell them. My parents asked me if I had any idea if Bonnie was upset about something, and I said I didn’t think so. And had she ever talked about any weird guy at school, or a guy hanging around anywhere? I told them she never mentioned anything like that to me. And she probably would have, because she calls me her ‘big brother.’ I’m really her cousin, but her own brother, Jockie, is only eight. And her sister, Heather, is nine. So they’re just little. It’s kind of a joke about me being her brother but, still, I think she’d tell me if she was scared about something.”
“This is really awful,” I said. I felt as if I was going to start crying. “It’s like a movie, except it’s really happening.”
“Yeah, and now Sharon and Andy won’t let the other kids go out anywhere. They’re terrified that whoever it is will come for one of the other kids.” No wonder, I thought.