The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn

by Gail Bowen

  I looked at Beth Mirasty’s letter. “This matters to me,” she had written; I knew it mattered to me, too.

  I turned to Jill. “I’m going to see her,” I said. “I’m going to see Beth Mirasty. She’s right. Sometimes it seems as if fate does take a hand.”

  Jill’s brow furrowed. “Just be sure it’s fate in there directing things,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling about this one. Don’t take things at face value here. For once in your life, Jo, don’t assume the best.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised. “And you can warn me again when we tape the Canada Day show. ‘A Time for Patriotism not Cynicism,’ right?”

  She shuddered. “Does that topic make you want to throw up, too? Anyway, taping ahead will give everybody the long weekend off, and nobody will be watching, anyway.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll wear that flowered dress I wore the first night. Get my money’s worth.”

  That afternoon I drove to the liquor store to pick up the wine for Greg’s and Mieka’s surprise party. I was just about to pull out of the parking lot when Helmut Keating came out of the side door of the liquor store. He was close enough for me to see that he was wearing his “Let Me Be Part of Your Dream” sweatshirt, but he didn’t see me. He was too busy supervising the employee who was pushing the dolly with his order on it. I watched as the two men unloaded the cases of liquor into a Jeep Cherokee, and when they went back inside, I waited. Five minutes later they came out with another load. They made four trips in all.

  When Helmut pulled out of the parking lot, the only part of the Cherokee that wasn’t loaded with liquor was the front seat. Whatever dream Helmut was going to be a part of was going to be a festive one. He drove north on Albert Street, turned off at the first side street past the Lily Pad, then doubled back. He pulled the Cherokee close to the back door of the Lily Pad and unloaded the liquor himself. That didn’t make sense. There had been a half-dozen kids lying on the grass by the plywood frog on the front lawn, and Helmut wasn’t the kind of guy who would feel he had to spare them on a hot day.

  It took him half an hour to unload the liquor. When he came out of the Lily Pad for the last time he looked hot and unhappy. He got into the Cherokee and roared out of the parking lot. As he drove off, I noticed his licence plate: “ICARE,” it said. I cared, too. I walked to the back door. It looked as if it had been designed to withstand a nuclear attack. The lock was the kind that was activated by a card; there was a sticker next to it that said, “SLC Security Systems.” High-powered stuff for the back door of a drop-in centre for street kids.

  I looked up at the old three-storey house that had been converted into the Lily Pad. There was nothing welcoming about the building from the back. There were no windows at ground level, and the windows on the upper storeys were closed off with blinds. It didn’t look like a place that would give up answers easily.

  The sun glinted off my Wandering Soul bracelet. I remembered Kim Barilko saying that she had known Christy Sinclair “from home and then at the Lily Pad. She was going to be my mentor.” Now Kim was dead and Christy was dead.

  I began to trace the incised letters on the bracelet with my fingertip. “Wandering Soul Pray For Me.” “What’s happening here, Christy?” I said. “What’s going on?” A cat leaped from nowhere and landed at my feet with a feral scream. I ran to the car and slammed the door behind me. It was broad daylight in the city where I’d lived most of my adult life, but my heart was pounding as if I were approaching the heart of darkness.

  “You’re being crazy,” I said, “overreacting.” I locked the car doors and took deep breaths until I was calm enough to turn the key in the ignition. As I drove south along Albert Street, I tried to comfort myself with the familiar. I knew the buildings and trees on that street as intimately as I knew the back of my hand. “You’re almost home,” I said. “You’re safe.” But as I pulled into the alley behind my house, I was still shaking violently. My body knew what my mind wouldn’t admit. The darkness I had felt at the Lily Pad wasn’t something I could lock my doors against or drive away from. It was all around me.

  Saturday night was Greg’s and Mieka’s surprise party. I had two jobs: to leave a key in the mailbox and to get the guests of honour out of the way. Keith offered to take us all for an early dinner at a restaurant about fifteen miles from the city. The place was called Stella’s. The decor was 1950s, the music was jukebox, and the food was very good. Everything went off without a hitch.

  I’d given Lorraine a key so she could welcome guests, and when we opened the front door, Mieka and Greg were met by a room filled with exuberant friends. It was a great party. Despite the fact that their wedding was two months away, Mieka and Greg were genuinely shocked – events of the past weeks had, I think, undermined their belief in happy surprises. But their friends had pulled it off, and their success made these handsome young men and women more ebullient than ever. Taylor was in her element. She loved excitement and colour and looking at people. Angus had fun, too. He was on the cusp of adolescence, sometimes a boy and sometimes a young man. That night as he helped with food and music and talked about Rocket Ismail and the Argonauts, he was a young man, and a happy one.

  Lorraine was enjoying herself, too. In fact, she was so relaxed that when we found ourselves alone late in the evening, I decided to ask her if she’d been involved in getting the job for me at NationTV. Before I was even finished the question, I knew I’d made a mistake. Lorraine’s smile didn’t fade, but her body tensed and her grey eyes grew wary.

  I tried to defuse the situation. “I’m only asking because I’m enjoying doing the show so much, and if you smoothed the way for me with Con O’Malley, I wanted to thank you.”

  Her manner changed. She became almost stagily coquettish. “Jo, I can’t imagine how you found out about Con and me, but since you have, I’ll tell you this. Our relationship has nothing to do with business. He’s my gentleman friend. We have much more exciting things to talk about than NationTV when we’re together. I think it’s wonderful that they hired you, but the idea didn’t come from me.” Suddenly, her eyes were wide. “I’m not the only member of the Harris family who’s friends with Con O’Malley, you know. Blaine and Keith have known him for years.” She stood up and smoothed the skirt of her white linen dress. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d like to freshen my drink.”

  After Lorraine left, I was edgy. Her behaviour had been odd. Mieka had said once that Lorraine thought of herself as a “man’s woman.” If that was the role she’d been playing for me, I hadn’t liked it. I poured myself a drink, but it didn’t help. Since the night of their engagement party, too much had gone wrong for Greg and Mieka. They deserved a joyous, uncomplicated evening, and I was tense with the fear that my encounter with Lorraine meant they wouldn’t get one. For the rest of the evening Lorraine kept her distance from me, but she held her cheek out for a kiss at the front door when she left. As I watched her walk down our front path, her hair silvery in the moonlight, I breathed a sigh of relief. From beginning to end, the evening had been flawless. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  In the middle of the night I was awakened by the sound of a woman crying out. I lay there in the dark, heart pounding, hoping the cry had been part of a dream. But as I listened the sound came again. It was outdoors, in the backyard. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

  Greg and Mieka were in the pool, swimming in the moonlight. The sounds I had heard were the little shrieks Mieka made as Greg dived under her and pulled her toward him in the water. They were naked – skinny-dipping, we used to call it. I could see the pale shapes of their bodies in the dark water. I turned away and then I heard my daughter’s voice. “Hey, watch this,” she said. I looked out the window.

  Mieka was swimming across the pool. Suddenly she disappeared under the water, then in a heartbeat, she stuck her bum up. I could see it gleaming whitely in the moonlight. Greg swam toward her and kissed the smooth white curve. Then he disappeared under the w
ater, too. I waited till they were both above the water, safe, happy, in love. Then I turned and went back to bed. As I lay between the cool sheets, listening to the sounds of the innocent summer night, I was smiling.

  Good times. There were good times ahead.

  The kids and I went to the early church service the next day, and we spent the rest of the morning getting ready for our trip up north. We were all looking forward to it. Angus and Taylor had been counting the days, and now that life seemed to have smoothed out for the big kids, I was looking forward to a holiday with Keith. We hadn’t exactly enjoyed smooth sailing since we met. Jill had arranged for us to do the July eighth show from the network’s northern studio, about an hour’s drive from where we would be staying. That meant Keith and Taylor and I were going to have ten days of sun and sand and the smell of pines.

  Sunday afternoon, I met Keith at the TV studio, and we taped the Canada Day program. It went well, and the minute the technician came and took off our microphones, Keith turned to me.

  “Let’s go home,” he said. I couldn’t wait.

  When we came out of the studio, the sun was shining. For the first time in a month there wasn’t a cloud in sight.

  “Look,” I said. “Blue skies as far as the eye can see. How’s that for an omen?”

  Keith stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took my hand.

  “The rain is over and gone,” he said. “The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

  I put my arms around his neck and drew him toward me. “I wish you’d waited till we were closer to your place before you said that.”

  “I thought it might make you move a little faster,” he murmured.

  It did.

  As we walked into the apartment, the phone was ringing. Keith made a face. “Should I answer it?”

  I shrugged.

  He crossed his fingers and picked up the receiver. I knew at once it wasn’t good news. He listened for a while, then he said, “I’ll be right down.”

  When he turned to me, his face was serious. “That was Lorraine. She wants me to come downstairs. She’s decided it’s time to put Blaine in a place where he can get special care.”

  “Did something happen?” I said.

  “Nothing dramatic. I have a feeling Lorraine just took a hard look at the problem and decided to throw in the towel.”

  “I thought your father was doing better,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me that he’d put a couple of words together this week?”

  “Yeah, but that was the only good news. And there’s a lot of bad news. Blaine’s getting just about impossible to control. Sean says as soon as he turns around, Blaine tries to get to the telephone or out the door. And he has these rages when Sean brings him back. He’s terrible with Lorraine, too. Remember how he was with you that night at the lake? He’s like that with her now. It’s awful for Lorraine, and of course it could be fatal for my father. Sean worries that Blaine is going to get his blood pressure sky-high and have another stroke.” For a moment, he stood silent, lost in thought, then he shook himself.

  “Anyway, I’d better get down there. Jo, why don’t you fix yourself a drink. I’ll be back as soon as I can manage.”

  When Keith returned, he looked grim.

  “So what’s going to happen?” I asked.

  Keith took my hands in his. “I’m not going to beat around the bush, Jo. I can’t go with you tomorrow. I’m sorrier than I can say, but this just has to be taken care of.”

  I pulled him close. “Damn,” I said. “I was really looking forward to being with you. But I know it can’t be helped. You’re doing the right thing. Right now, if I could figure out a way to make you do the wrong thing, I would, but that’ll pass. I know it isn’t all polka dots and moonbeams at our age.”

  Keith poured us drinks and we took them to the balcony. Across the street in the park, some boys were playing touch football: shirts and skins. The sun was hot; the skins team would be in agony by the end of the day. Toward the lake, a crew was putting up a sound system in the bandshell for Canada Day. I thought how nice it would be to sit with Keith on a blanket in the grass, eating hot dogs and listening to the symphony.

  But it wasn’t going to be that kind of weekend.

  I turned to Keith. “What happens next?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “As usual, Lorraine has us organized. She’s found a place in Minnesota that’s supposed to be terrific. Out in the country, good staff-patient ratio, first-rate special care, and reliable security.”

  “Security?” I said, surprised.

  “I told you that Blaine keeps trying to wander off.”

  I thought of that proud, elegant old man, and my heart sank. “What an awful thing for him,” I said.

  Keith looked grim. “I know. That’s why Lorraine wants me to fly to Minneapolis with him.”

  “How soon?” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “Don’t you usually have to wait months for places like that?” I said.

  For the first time since he’d come upstairs, Keith smiled. “People who aren’t Lorraine have to wait months,” he said. “But Lorraine always manages to move right to the head of the line. Anyway, this time, let’s be glad she was able to pull some strings. If this place is the best thing for Blaine, then it’s a case of the sooner the better.” He reached over and touched my hair. “Once I get Blaine in, I can come home. If we’re lucky, you and I can salvage at least part of our holiday.”

  “Let’s hope we’re lucky,” I said. “Let’s hope.”

  That night, as I sat at the kitchen table planning the route the kids and I would take to Havre Lake, hope had already given way to stoic acceptance. I’d replaced my new nightgown, silky and seductive, with the flannelette granny gown my neighbour had given me the year Angus was born. I knew that it got cold in the north when you were sleeping alone. There didn’t seem to be much to look forward to except a good night’s sleep and a seven-hour drive with two kids in the back seat.

  Suddenly I thought of my old friend Hilda McCourt. Saskatoon wasn’t far out of our way, and I was in need of a sympathetic ear. When I called her, she said she’d be delighted to have us all come for lunch. “A Canada Day menu,” she said.

  “Beaver soup?” I said.

  “If all else fails,” she said dryly. “I can assure you that one thing we will have is a bottle of single-malt Scotch. I’m looking forward to toasting our country’s birthday with you, Joanne. Now, I’ll let you go. You must have preparations. Drive safely. I’ll look for you at twelve.”

  Just the sound of Hilda’s voice made me feel better.

  By the time I opened the windows, pulled up the blankets and turned out the lights, I was looking forward to the next day. I loved the north, and it would be fun to explore it with the kids. If all went well in Minnesota, Keith would join me, and before the end of the week, the singing of birds and the voice of the turtle would be heard in our land.

  The telephone began to ring not long after I fell asleep. My danger sensors must have been off full alert, because I reached for the receiver without a second thought. The sounds I heard were barely human: angry cries and shapeless vowels. Then, very clearly, I heard the familiar word, “Killdeer,” and, after a beat, two new words. “The rain,” said Blaine Harris in his unused, angry voice. “The rain.” Then the line went dead.

  As I lay there in the dark listening to the dial tone, I was glad I was getting out of town.

  CHAPTER

  10

  When I woke up on Canada Day the rain had started again. I turned on the radio and lay in bed, listening. The local news was a litany of cancellations: sports days, slow-pitch tournaments, Olde Tyme picnics, tractor pulls, walking tours, bed races, mud flings, parades. Everything was cancelled because of the weather. I
remembered Blaine Harris’s phone call the night before. “The rain,” he’d said. Maybe he’d just been giving me the weather forecast.

  I put on my sweats and took the dogs for a run. Greg and Mieka would take care of them while I was away. Somehow, with wedding plans and love in the air, I had the sense that the daily runs might be sporadic. We made an extra-long run: around the lake and home. It was a distance the dogs and I used to do often when we were younger, but it had been a while. By the time we got back, we were all panting and pleased with ourselves.

  I fed the dogs, made coffee, showered and spent ten minutes rubbing my body with the expensive lotion Mieka had given me the Christmas before. Finally, wearing the blue dress I had worn the first night I had dinner with Keith, I slid the bracelet on my wrist. When I felt the bracelet warm against my skin, I understood why I had called Hilda the night before. I had thought then that I needed a sympathetic ear, but that wasn’t it. What I needed was advice. Every part of me that answered to the rules of logic said I should let Christy and Kim rest in peace. But life was not always ruled by logic, and Hilda McCourt was a woman who understood this. She would understand the power of the bracelet and the pull of my commitment to those dead girls. Hilda would be my final arbiter. If she thought I was wrong to keep pushing to discover the route by which Theresa Desjarlais had become Christy Sinclair, I’d give up. When I drove north, I’d stop at the Northern Lights Motel, have coffee with Beth Mirasty and tell her that her husband was right: the past was past.

  When I came down, Taylor and Angus were sitting at the breakfast table, dressed, with their hair neatly combed, eating Eggos and fresh strawberries. The night before, when I had told Angus that Keith wouldn’t be part of our holiday, he had started with his usual barrage of questions, but something in my face must have stopped him. He’d given me a hug and wandered off to bed. He was learning discretion, growing up.