The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn

by Gail Bowen

  Greg had told us the Victoria Day ritual was as old as the cottages. The anthem, then one by one, the cottages set off their fireworks from the beach until the lake had been ringed with rockets.

  This year it was the Harris’s turn to begin. Greg had set up a rocket in the sand. As he knelt to light it, I could hear Mieka’s voice, “Be careful. Be careful. Get back.” And I thought she was her mother’s daughter after all.

  There was a small flash of light, and then the rocket went screaming up into the dark night; it hung there in space for a heartbeat, then it shattered into a shower of brilliant sparks, gold, green, pink.

  “Coloured stars,” Taylor said, and her eyes were wide with wonder. They kept getting wider. The Harrises were presenting an impressive array of fireworks. When the last stars from the last rocket fell to the ground, Greg came over to the dock with a packet of sparklers. As the moonlight hit his face, I looked for traces of Keith’s side of the family in him, but I couldn’t see any.

  Greg Harris had his mother’s colouring and her grey eyes but, curiously, not her good looks. The week before, he’d called the tux rental place from our house, and I’d heard him say, “I’m just an ordinary-looking guy, so nothing too Ralph Lauren.” He was right. He was ordinary looking. He was also kind and bright and funny, and crazy about Mieka. Every time I looked at him, I counted my blessings.

  As he handed the sparklers to Angus and went through the warnings, I counted my blessings again.

  “Best part coming up, Angus. You’re in charge. Watch your eyes, and don’t light Taylor on fire.” Greg grinned at me. “How’d I do, Jo? Cover all the bases.”

  I smiled at him. “You always do,” I said.

  We stood and watched as Angus, newly mature, lit the sparklers carefully and handed them to Taylor. She had never seen a sparkler, and her face was solemn as she wrote her name in letters that glowed and vanished in the dark summer night. And then there was a whooshing sound and the fireworks from the next cottage began, sputtering, climbing to the stars and exploding.

  “I’d better get back to the party,” Greg said. “From the sound of things they need a moral centre over there.” He gave me a quick hug. “Have fun, Jo. If you need anything, holler.”

  For an hour the rockets soared and coloured lights rained down on the lake. When I saw a man jump from the dock next to ours onto the beach, I said to the kids, “Last one. Greg says the last family always has to buy the most expensive stuff for the grand finale.”

  Taylor, already punchy from excitement and tiredness, leaned forward expectantly. But nothing happened. Then I heard a man’s voice, very faint.

  “Help,” he said. “Someone help me. There’s been an accident.”

  I looked toward the beach. Peter and Mieka were standing by the bonfire, their faces ruddy from the heat and reflected flames. They hadn’t heard a thing. People had started dancing, and the music must have drowned out the man’s voice.

  “Take your sister up to the house and get some help,” I said to Angus. Then I ran along the dock, jumped onto the rocky shore and moved toward the voice in the darkness.

  The man was still holding the rocket that was going to be the grand finale, but it didn’t look as if he’d be setting it off that night. He seemed to be on the verge of shock.

  “She’s drowned. I just got here from the city. I got tied up at the office.” He pointed to the pilings under the dock. “There’s a girl down there. I think she’s dead.”

  “Call an ambulance,” I said. “I’ll do CPR until someone comes. Go on,” I said.

  I went over to the pilings and pulled the woman’s body to the beach. Then I knelt on the rocks, leaned forward and tried to breathe life into the limp body of Christy Sinclair. I’d completed four cycles of compressions and ventilations when one of Greg’s friends came and relieved me. I’d talked to him earlier in the tent. He’d said he was an intern, and this was his first night away from the hospital in two weeks. We spelled each other off for what seemed like hours. Finally, he rocked back on his heels and said, “We lost her.”

  For the first time, I looked up. The guests from the engagement party were huddled in silent knots along the length of the dock. Greg and Peter were directly above me. Mieka was behind her brother, with her arms locked around his waist as if she was holding him back. But Peter didn’t look as if he was going anywhere. He seemed frozen, and his face as he looked at Christy showed disbelief. I moved toward Christy. One of her Capezios had fallen off. She had always been immaculate, and it didn’t seem right to let people see her with one foot bare and her white party dress sodden and weedy. I leaned forward and took off the other shoe and laid it beside her body. Then I wiped a flume of weeds from the skirt of her dress. She was so still. The animation that had always illuminated her face was gone. The stillness changed her, made her look as if, already, she had become the citizen of a far-off land. But her mouth hadn’t changed; it had curved into its familiar sardonic line. Christy Sinclair was greeting death with her sidelong pickerel smile.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The RCMP officer who was first on the scene after we discovered Christy Sinclair’s body was a round-faced constable named Kequahtooway. He wasn’t much older than the young men and women at the party, but he took charge easily. The first thing he did was call headquarters for reinforcements. It was a prudent move. There were sixty-three people at that party, and one of them was dead. The second thing Constable Kequahtooway did was try to bring some order to the chaos.

  Less than an hour earlier, Mieka’s and Greg’s friends, handsome in their summer pastels, had been careless and confident. Nothing would ever hurt them. Christy’s death had made them all vulnerable. Now, dazed and disoriented, they turned for reassurance to a young Indian man wearing the uniform of the RCMP and the traditional braids of his people. It was a scene that would have surprised everybody’s grandparents.

  Constable Kequahtooway blocked off the area where Christy had been found, then he set up a place for questioning in the tent. It had been half an hour since I’d sent Angus up to the house with Taylor; suddenly, I needed to know that they were safe. As soon as I turned down the hall on the main floor of the house, I ran into Keith Harris.

  “My God, what’s happening?” he said. “We were watching the fireworks. Everything seemed fine, and then the police car pulled up. As soon as he saw it, my father just went crazy.” As if on cue, a howling noise came from Blaine Harris’s room at the end of the hall. Keith winced. “He’s been like this ever since the police came. Jo, what’s going on?”

  “Peter’s friend Christy was in some sort of accident down on the beach. Nobody knows what happened, but, Keith … Christy didn’t make it. She’s dead.” It was the first time I had said the words, and I shuddered at their finality. “I still can’t believe it,” I said.

  Keith reached out and touched my cheek. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He looked toward his father’s room. “I’ve got to find a doctor for Blaine. He can’t go on like this. I’ll be right back. As soon as I get my dad taken care of, I’ll find you, and we can talk.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  Keith took me in his arms. It was the briefest of embraces, but that night it was good to be close to another human being, good to have an ally against the things that go bump in the night.

  The room Taylor and I were sharing was next door to Lorraine’s room, or what was normally Lorraine’s room. She’d put Blaine Harris in there because it was on the main floor. As I walked down the hall toward the room, I could hear the sounds he was making. He sounded furious. There was an edge of frustration in his cries, and I thought of the inchoate fury of my kids when they were very young and didn’t have the words to tell me what they wanted. Just as I opened the door to our room, the old man managed to form a word.

  “Killdeer,” he said, and as he pronounced the word, his voice was as loud and as penetrating as the bird’s call.

  Taylor was sleeping, and Angus was s
itting in a chair by the window.

  “Scrunch over and make room for me,” I said.

  I squeezed in beside him and pulled him close. “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Okay, I guess. Greg came by and told me that it was Christy down there. He said he’d stay with me, but I told him Mieka probably needed him more than I did.”

  He looked up at me. “I didn’t like Christy, Mum. She was always pulling stuff with Pete, and what she said in the car about getting married gave me the creeps.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “All the same …” His voice cracked, and he started again. “All the same, now that she’s dead, I feel like a real butt head.”

  For a moment we sat in silence, absorbed in our thoughts. Finally, I leaned toward my youngest son. “I fed like a butt head, too. Listen, Angus, I haven’t got many answers about this, but I do know it’s normal to feel rotten when someone dies and we haven’t treated her as well as we should have. You and I are going to feel bad about Christy for a long time. There’s no way around that. But there’s one thing we have to hang on to here. It wasn’t our fault that Christy died. It was an accident.

  “Now, come on, it’s late. You should try to get some sleep. I’ll walk you to your room, or would you rather stay here?”

  “I’d better go to my own room,” he said. “Pete’s in there with me, you know. He might want to talk.”

  He looked at me, and we both smiled. Pete had never been much of a talker.

  “He’ll be glad you’re there, anyway,” I said.

  I checked Taylor. She was sleeping deeply.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you settled. At least over there, you won’t have to listen to Greg’s poor grandfather.”

  “What’s the matter with him, Mum?”

  “I think he’s frustrated,” I said. “I think he’s mad because he has something important on his mind, and he can’t talk any more.”

  After I got Angus settled, I went outside. It seemed as if there were as many police as there were guests. There were uniforms everywhere. I walked to the tent and looked in. Peter was there, sitting across the table from a young woman in an RCMP uniform. I went and sat at one of the wrought-iron tables that had been set out around the pool for dinner. If I couldn’t help my son, I could at least be somewhere he could see me.

  I was sitting there feeling powerless and sad when Greg came and sat across from me. The lights from the tent leached the colour from his cheeks and knifed lines in the planes of his face. He looked twenty years older than he had when he’d come to the dock to bring the kids their sparklers.

  “Thanks for checking on Angus,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I wanted to do something.” He looked at me. “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”

  “Woody Allen,” I said.

  He smiled. Greg’s passion for Woody Allen was a family joke. When his relationship with Mieka started to get serious, Greg had come over one snowy Friday night with an armload of videos. “I think it’s time you met God,” he had said as he loaded Annie Hall into our VCR.

  That weekend we had a Woody Allen festival, and Greg, smart enough to know he sounded like a groupie in a Woody movie, explained every frame of every movie. After that, Woody had become a part of all our lives. We teased Greg about him, but it had been terrific for all of us to have a touchstone to share with the man Mieka loved.

  That terrible night at the lake Woody seemed to work his magic once again. At the mention of his name, Greg seemed to relax. “For once you’re wrong, Jo. I wasn’t thinking of Woody, but now that you mention him … Do you know what he said about death? ‘I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ ”

  “Woody and the rest of the thinking population,” I said.

  “Right.” Greg picked up a matchbook someone had left behind, took out a match and lit it. He watched it flame, then burn out. His young face was stricken. “What I was thinking about was Christy. Jo, they found the boat she was in – it was almost in the middle of the lake. It was the red canoe my mother gave me for my sixteenth birthday. There was a half-empty bottle of rye in it. And, Jo, there was an empty pill bottle in the boat, too. My mother sometimes takes these tranquilizers, and Christy must have found the bottle in Mum’s bathroom cupboard. Anyway, it was empty. The police aren’t saying anything, of course, but from the questions they were asking me, I think they’re treating this as a suicide.”

  I thought of Christy’s face in the moments after Peter came, when she knew that whatever future they had together wouldn’t include love.

  “Oh, God, poor Christy,” I said. Then I thought of my son. “Greg, does Peter know?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I had to go down and identify the boat and my mother’s pills. I just overheard things. I’m sure the police aren’t telling people yet.” He pushed himself back from the table. “I’d better see how Mieka’s doing. This has been a pretty awful night for her, too.”

  “She’s lucky she has you,” I said.

  He smiled. “That goes both ways, you know.”

  After he left, I felt myself slump. When Constable Kequahtooway came over and slid into the chair Greg had been sitting in, it took an effort of will to look up. “P. Kequahtooway,” his badge said. I had heard one of the other cops call him Perry.

  Up close, Perry Kequahtooway looked very young, but he was assured and he was thorough. I didn’t find his questions painful; I had already moved into that zone of blunted emotion that comes when I know the worst has happened. I was able to replay the scenes of the evening pretty much without emotion: the time Christy had arrived at our house; the drive down; when I had seen her; when I hadn’t seen her. Constable Kequahtooway took it all down without comment. Then he looked at me and asked a question I wasn’t prepared for. “Did you know that Christy Sinclair listed you as next of kin on the emergency card in her wallet?”

  I was dumfounded. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I’m just the mother of a boy she was going out with. She has family in Estevan. They sent her money regularly. I mean she said they did, and they must have. Christy’s only income was what she earned as a teaching assistant – there’s no way she could have afforded the life she lived on a graduate student’s stipend.” I realized I was talking more to myself than to him. When I looked up, he was waiting patiently.

  “And the name of the people in Estevan is Sinclair?” he asked.

  “I guess so,” I said weakly. “At least that’s what Christy said.”

  “But you didn’t believe her?” Constable Kequahtooway asked.

  “She was a complicated young woman,” I said.

  Constable Perry Kequahtooway looked at me patiently. “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “There’s not much to tell,” I said, “except that sometimes Christy had her own perception of reality.”

  “She told lies,” he said softly.

  I nodded. Behind him, I could see Peter coming out of the tent, alone.

  “Can I go to see my son now?” I asked.

  Constable Kequahtooway looked surprised. “Of course, Mrs. Kilbourn.”

  “Did you tell him that Christy committed suicide?” I asked.

  Suddenly, he was tense. “What makes you think she did?”

  “Greg Harris told me about the empty pill bottle in the bottom of the canoe.”

  “An empty pill bottle doesn’t make a suicide, Mrs. Kilbourn. I’d appreciate it if you kept your theories to yourself. I really would. We don’t want to muddy the waters here.”

  I caught up with Peter at the front door to the house.

  “How about some coffee?” I said. “It’s getting cold out there. Or tea?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing, thanks. I think I’d like to walk, though.”

  He started toward the road, and I followed.

  “The beach is pretty crowded, with the police and everybody,” he said.

  We stopped at a hairpin tu
rn in the road and walked toward a jut of land that overlooked the lake. Beneath us we could see the police checking the beach. The red canoe had been pulled up on shore.

  I touched his arm. “Peter, I know this is a bad time to ask, but the police say that Christy had a card in her wallet that listed me as her next of kin. Do you know anything about it?”

  There was a full moon that night. In the pale light, my son seemed alien, not just older but metamorphosed, as if Christy’s death had changed him into a different man.

  “She was so fucked up,” he said in a voice tight with pain. “She was so fucking fucked up.”

  Then he began to cry. I put my arms around him and held him as he sobbed out his grief. Finally, he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. “We’d better get back,” he said.

  For a few minutes we walked in silence, then Peter stopped. “I wanted her out of my life, and now she is,” he said. It sounded as if he was speaking more to himself than to me.

  “Peter, can you talk about it? What happened with you two tonight?”

  “I don’t know, Mum. Everything seemed all right. All we were doing was going up to the house to dance, remember? It was all so quick. Christy said she’d talked to you about us getting married the same day Mieka and Greg did, and I said okay. Then that radio Angus was playing with came on, and Christy just bugged out. I went after her, but when I finally found out what room she was in, she wouldn’t let me in. I know you’ll find this hard to understand, but it didn’t really worry me when Christy wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  He raked his hand through his hair. “She did it all the time. She never needed a reason. Once she told me it was a compulsion – that she had to keep testing me to see how far she could go before I’d stop loving her.”

  I ran my forefinger over the lettering on the bracelet Christy had given me. “Did she get to that point tonight?”