by Gail Bowen
“She got past that point a long time ago,” he said bleakly.
“Then what in the name of God were you doing back together?” I asked.
He put his head down and started walking faster.
“Peter, please, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but we have to. This isn’t The Brady Bunch. This is real. A young woman died tonight. If you didn’t care about her, what was she doing here talking about marriage?”
Suddenly the answer was there, and I wondered if I’d been waiting for flaming letters in the sky.
“She was pregnant,” I said.
He nodded. “We would have gotten married. That wasn’t what upset her.”
I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach. “What then? What made her decide to …”
“Decide to what, Mum?”
I could see the pulse beating in Peter’s neck. He didn’t need to hear speculations about Christy’s death tonight. “Nothing, Pete. You look exhausted. What time did you get up this morning, anyway?”
“Five-thirty,” he said. “Animals are early risers.” For a beat he was silent, then he turned to me. “I wish I was back there now. I wish it was still this morning and none of this had happened.”
I slid my arm around my son’s waist, and together we started toward the house. We didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to say.
When we got back, the house and grounds were still brilliantly lit. It would have been easy to believe there was still a celebration going on. But as I walked through the silent house I knew the party was over. Suddenly, I was so weary I had to force myself to turn the knob of the door to my room. Taylor had kicked off her bedclothes. I tucked her in, then I went over to my bed and collapsed. I didn’t even turn down the bedspread.
That night was a troubled one for Blaine Harris, and that meant it was a troubled one for me. For hours, Keith’s father seemed to drift in and out of anguish. Close to morning, I heard muffled voices on the other side of the wall, and the old man’s voice was finally stilled. I couldn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, Christy was there. The last time he saw her alive, Christy had told Peter she had to talk to me, that it was urgent. Why would she tell him that if she’d planned to take her own life? It didn’t make sense.
When it was light enough to read the hands on my watch, I decided to give up. During the night Mieka had come in and crawled into bed with Taylor. As I walked to the bathroom, I stopped and looked at them. They were curled together spoon fashion, rosy, seeking out animal warmth in the time of trouble. It was instinct.
I showered and pulled on a fresh cotton dress and sandals. It was still cool, and I took a sweater out of my bag and walked to the kitchen to make coffee. In the half-light of dawn the kitchen was a ghostly place and shiningly perfect, although I knew the couple who worked for Lorraine Harris had made sandwiches and hot drinks for everyone late in the evening.
I found coffee in the cupboard, and as I waited for it to brew, I wandered into the sunroom next to the kitchen. Lorraine had set up an office in one corner of the room; a pretty rolltop desk faced the windows, and a small filing cabinet was tucked discreetly in the corner. There were two pictures on the desk. In one, Lorraine, elegant in black, her extravagant hair smoothed in a chignon, sat at a head table beaming up at a man giving a speech. I recognized some of the other people at the banquet. Like Lorraine, they were wheelers and dealers in the business community, people I knew because I had seen their pictures on the financial pages of the newspaper. The man who was speaking seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He must have been a major player in Lorraine’s life, because he was in the second picture, too. This one was informal, a holiday picture, someplace where there were palm trees and white sand. In this photo, Lorraine and the man were wearing cruise clothes and they were both deeply tanned. The man was reaching out to touch a spray of flame-coloured hibiscus in Lorraine’s hair. He looked smug and proprietorial, and I was glad it wasn’t my hair he was touching.
I went to the kitchen, poured a mug of coffee and took it down to the dock. The sky was overcast, and mist was rising like smoke from the lake. I had the sense that I was the only person in the world. The morning had the cool menace of an Alex Colville painting. Across the lake was the hill where Peter Hourie and his men had seen the buffalo. A million buffalo. All dead now. Murdered into near extinction. Out of nowhere a phrase came into my mind – “too proud or too dumb to live” – and I thought of Bernice Morin sprawled over the garbage can outside Mieka’s store and of Christy, her generous mouth frozen in a death grin. Two young women dead.
Through the grey mist I could see the yellow police tape marking off the beach where Christy had died. To the south, on the other side of the dock, more police tape marked off the beach where hours before young people had danced and laughed, privileged, enviable.
Suddenly I had the sense that I wasn’t alone. I turned and behind me was Keith Harris. He was wearing a pale blue sport shirt. A shirt for a Saturday morning, except this wasn’t going to be a day for golf and sun and gin and tonic in the clubhouse. His face was haggard.
“I looked for you last night,” he said, “but I saw you were with your family. I didn’t want to intrude. Did you get any sleep?”
“Not much,” I said.
“Of course, your room’s next to Blaine’s. I’m sorry, Jo. That must have been the last thing you needed.”
“He sounded so angry,” I said. “My kids used to sound like that when they were little and they couldn’t figure out how to get from point A to point B.”
Keith sighed. “Most of the time I just deal with the situations that come up. Straightforward stuff, problem and solution. Then, every so often, like last night, I get a glimpse of what it must be like for him. That’s when I go crazy.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“Since Easter Sunday. I was with him when it happened. We were golfing. My dad had a putter in his hand, and suddenly he gave me this odd, preoccupied look and said, ‘I don’t know what to do with this.’ I thought he was kidding and I made some joke. But he didn’t laugh. He just stood there looking baffled.
“One of the other members of our foursome was a doctor. He knew right away. I went to the hospital with them, and I asked the neurologist to let me stay while they did the CAT scan. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared. There was this picture of my father’s brain; on it, I could see a dark stain about the size of a robin’s egg. That was the hemorrhage, and as I watched, the stain started spreading. And the neurologist said, very coolly: ‘He just lost speech,’ and then the stain elongated and spread, and he said, ‘That was mobility. If it keeps augmenting there won’t be much left.’ And I looked at him, and I said, ‘That’s my father you’re writing off, asshole,’ and I walked out of the room.”
Keith had been looking away from me, toward the lake. Suddenly he faced me. “Jo, I’m sorry. Sometimes, I think Blaine’s becoming an obsession with me. I should be thinking about you. Do they know anything more about what happened last night?”
I shook my head. “I had a long talk with Constable Kequahtooway, but I think it’s too early for them to know much for sure.”
“Greg said he told you about the police finding that empty pill bottle in the canoe. You knew Christy Sinclair, Jo. Does that add up? Would she have committed suicide?”
“If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said no. But now I’m not so sure. In the last twenty-four hours of her life, something went terribly wrong for Christy. I don’t know what kinds of things she was dealing with. Except …” I stopped.
“Except what?” Keith said gently.
Suddenly, I was tired of secrets. I wanted somebody else to share the burden. “Christy was pregnant, Keith.”
He looked stricken. “Poor Peter,” he said, “to lose a child.” It was such an odd thing to say, but somehow it was exactly right. I was feeling that loss, too.
When the wind came up, we walked to the house hand in hand
. Keith brought coffee out, and we sat at one of the tables near the pool and talked about life and loss.
When Taylor came running out of the house, the mood shifted from the elegiac. She had chosen her own clothes from the suitcase; they were mismatched, and her blonde hair was tangled from sleep, but she was hotly eager to get the day underway. No one had told her about Christy.
She jumped on my lap and put her arms around me.
“And good morning to you, too,” I said. “This is a great way to begin the day.”
She looked around. “Can I go and get Angus?” she said.
“Let him sleep for a while, T.,” I said. “He was up pretty late. Why don’t you draw him a picture?”
Keith handed her a pen. “Sorry, I don’t have paper,” he said.
“I know where there’s some,” I said. I went into the tent. Lorraine’s clipboard was still on the card table. I ripped a sheet from the pad where she’d written the names of the teams for croquet. I brought the paper out and handed it to Taylor.
“There’s writing on it,” Taylor said.
“Use the other side,” I said. “Angus will be proud of how you’re conserving trees.”
She sat and drew, and Keith and I watched her.
When I’d finished my coffee, I stood up. “I’d better go see what’s happening here. If there’s anything I can do, I’ll stay, but if not, I’m going back to the city. I’m sure Lorraine would be relieved to have everyone out right about now.”
He smiled. “I think I’d better stick around till tomorrow. Blaine shouldn’t be moved when he’s like this. Besides, Lorraine has a touching belief that men are useful in a crisis. I’ll call you as soon as I get back in the city.”
I gave him my number, then I tapped Taylor on the shoulder.
“Come on, T. It’s time to boogie.”
Taylor handed me her drawing. “Here, for Angus,” she said. It was a page full of frogs. “Since he can’t take any real ones home with him,” she explained.
“Great,” I said. I looked at it again. “It really is great, Taylor.” I showed it to Keith, and we walked to the house. When I got to my room, I slipped the picture into my bag and forgot about it.
The couple who worked for Lorraine Harris were busy in the kitchen making breakfast. I could smell the good aromas of bacon and toast and waffles. Some of the young people from the party were already eating. They were over the first shock, but as I looked at them, I knew it would be a long time before they recovered. Their voices, so exuberant the night before, were muted; even their gestures seemed careful and controlled, as if they were afraid of drawing attention to themselves.
Keith and I filled plates for ourselves and for Taylor. After we’d eaten, I poured a glass of juice and went up to check on Peter. I knocked at his door.
“It’s okay. Come on in,” he said.
He’d showered and dressed, but he looked terrible.
I handed him the juice. “They have breakfast downstairs,” I said. “Can I bring you something?”
He took a tentative sip. “Thanks, Mum. I think I’ll be doing pretty well if I manage to get this down.”
“Pete, I think as soon as you’re up to it, we should go back to the city. This place is a nightmare for everybody right now. If we went home, you could sit out in the sunshine with the dogs and be by yourself for a while.”
Peter went to the corner, picked up the clothes he’d been wearing the night before and shoved them in his knapsack. “I’m ready when you are,” he said.
After everyone had eaten, it didn’t take us long to get organized. Mieka decided to stay at the lake with the Harrises. She said they needed her, and she was right. The doctor who came to check on Blaine had been alarmed about the deterioration in his condition. Greg wanted to stay with his grandfather, and Mieka wanted to be with Greg.
Peter said he’d feel better if he drove, and Angus volunteered to go with him. So just Taylor and I were riding in the Volvo for the trip back. As I started up the driveway, a yellow Buick hurtled out of the garage behind the house and turned onto the driveway. I had to brake to keep from hitting it. I don’t think Lorraine Harris even saw me, but I saw her. She was wearing her horn-rimmed glasses, and her grey hair was loose. She disappeared over the hill in a split second, but as I drove carefully around one of the hairpin turns on the reserve road, I saw the buttercup-yellow Buick on the other side of the valley. Lorraine was really tearing up the highway. I thought she must be desperate to put miles between herself and the disaster she left behind.
It was the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend, and traffic on the highway into the city was light. When we passed Edenwold, I saw that the tundra swans had gone. Moved on north. I thought of Christy standing by the fence in the brilliant May sunshine: “If they’re smart and lucky, they’ll make it.” Maybe, I thought. Maybe.
We were in Regina by ten-fifteen. As we drove through the city streets, we could see people in their front yards putting in bedding plants, visiting. The months of grey isolation were over; it was time to get reacquainted with the neighbours.
“How would you like to do that today?” I said to Taylor, pointing to a girl helping her mother garden.
She frowned. “I thought maybe we could get my new bike today, since we came back early. Maybe Angus could teach me how to ride it.”
I hadn’t told her about Christy yet, and I was dreading it. Taylor had already seen too much death in her young life. I remembered Angus’s guilt and confusion about Christy the night before. Giving his sister bike-riding lessons might be just the distraction he needed.
“What do you say we go right now? Then we can come home and surprise the boys.”
When we came back from the bike shop, Peter’s car was in the driveway. Angus shook his head in amazement when he saw the bike. “Oh, T., a pink two-wheeler?” But he helped her buckle on her helmet and lifted her onto the seat. I ran inside and got the camera and snapped away as Taylor, proud in the bike seat, wobbled onto the sidewalk.
When I went to the house to get another roll of film, the phone was ringing.
Jill Osiowy sounded excited. “Something interesting’s come up in the Little Flower murders, Jo.”
I sank into the chair by the phone. I didn’t want to hear what Jill was going to tell me. I didn’t want to hear anything more about young women who had died before they’d even started to live.
“Listen to this,” she said. “The cops have decided that Bernice Morin’s death wasn’t one of the Little Flower murders. The face wasn’t mutilated, and the weapon was wrong. The other girls were stabbed with heavy knives, the kind you buy in a sporting goods store if you’re going hunting. The scalpel that killed Bernice came from a medical supply house. It’s the kind they use in hospitals and labs. I’ll tell you the details later, but here’s the scary part. The cops think Bernice’s murder was a copy-cat killing. Think about that for a minute, Jo. There’s somebody out there who figured if he made Bernice’s death look like another Little Flower murder, the police would just kind of wink and look the other way. The perfect crime.”
Suddenly, Jill noticed that I hadn’t said anything. “Jo, what’s the matter? Have you lost interest in these girls, too?” She sounded angry, and I felt a lump come to my throat.
“Don’t be mad,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just … Jill, we’ve had a tragedy ourselves. Peter’s friend Christy Sinclair died last night out at the lake. I’m doing my best to keep everybody, including me, from falling apart. I don’t think I can take in another thing.”
Jill’s voice was soft with concern. “Jo, I’m sorry. How awful. Is there anything I can do? If you want company, I can be over there in ten minutes.”
“Maybe later on tonight,” I said. “Right now, I think we’re better off on our own. Everybody’s pretty fragile.”
“I can imagine,” she said. “Look, if you need me, call. You know, sometimes the best thing to do is just go through the motions.”
; And that’s what the kids and I did. We went through the motions. All things considered, we didn’t do badly. We had lunch, and the kids rode bikes most of the afternoon. No one broke a bone, and they were still speaking to one another when they came in for dinner. Peter curled up on the couch and watched the Mets-Dodgers game, and I put in bedding plants. I had just finished planting the last of the geraniums in the front garden when the police car pulled up.
I recognized Constable Perry Kequahtooway, but I didn’t remember seeing the woman who was with him. She was a small brunette with a tense body and clever eyes. Perry Kequahtooway introduced her as Officer Kelly Miner.
“I wonder if we could step inside for a moment, Mrs. Kilbourn?” she said. “We’re still puzzled about Christy Sinclair’s next of kin situation.”
They followed me in, and we sat down at the kitchen table.
Constable Kequahtooway spoke first. His voice was as gentle as his manner, but he got right to the point.
“We keep coming back to you, Mrs. Kilbourn. Everywhere we check – her employment records, her university insurance policy, even the form she filled out when she had some outpatient surgery in Saskatoon last February – every place we look, Christy Sinclair listed you as her next of kin.”
I started to say something, but he held his hand up to stop me. “There’s more. The Saskatoon police just checked out Christy Sinclair’s condominium. Were you ever there?”
I shook my head. “She always came to our place.”
“It’s in Lawson Heights,” Officer Miner said, “very posh. But the point is that there were pictures of you and Christy all over the place.” She was watching my face carefully.
“Christmas pictures,” I said.
“For the most part,” she agreed.
“They’d have to be,” I said. “Peter and Christy only dated for a few months, and Christmas was the only time we were taking pictures. But we took pictures of everybody during the holidays. There were pictures of Christy with all the people in our family.”
“Not in her home,” Officer Miner said. “And there weren’t any indications of the Estevan connection you mentioned, either. No address book or envelopes with an Estevan address. We’ve checked in Estevan, too. No Sinclairs. No one by that name in the area. We’re trying a picture ID down there, but so far no luck.”