The Winners' Circle

by Gail Bowen

  “That’s promising news,” I said. “Hey, I almost forgot. Lorne Callow stopped by about an hour ago – officially in his capacity as acting head of the firm’s HR.”

  “Is he worried about Keating?”

  “He is, and he’s confused because he has no idea what’s going on. Lorne’s planning to talk to Emmett. I just hope one of the partners tells him about the restructuring and the list before he hears it from Emmett. Lorne is trying to do what’s best for everyone. The last thing you need is for him to feel alienated.”

  “I’ll try to reach Delia before I go,” Zack said. “Callow’s a good guy.”

  “He seems like it,” I said. “When I thanked him for handling the situation last night and attempting to connect with Emmett today, he said there are times when we really are our brother’s keeper.”

  Zack was thoughtful. “Why is it always a shock when someone does something out of sheer decency?” He glanced at his watch. “No time for pondering the imponderables. I have to finish packing and make tracks to the airport.”

  “This is the first time we’ve been apart since we were married,” I said.

  “I’m no happier about this than you are, but I’ll be back next Saturday morning, and the meetings Norine has lined up for me – especially the ones with the production companies – will be terrific for the city.”

  “Thinking about your legacy?”

  Zack shrugged. “When I was sworn in as mayor, we said we’d be satisfied if we left the city in better shape than it was when I started. Bringing the film industry back here is just one step, but it could be a big one.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when I spend the next seven nights trying not to stare at the place where you should be in our bed.”

  —

  Zack is no fonder of goodbyes than I am. As soon as he checked his bags, we embraced. Then, he went into the departures area and I headed for Margot’s. She buzzed me up and was waiting at the elevator with her jacket and boots on when I arrived.

  For a beat we just stood apart, arms stiffly at our sides. “I didn’t call ahead because I thought you might not want to see me,” I said finally.

  “I was on my way to your place,” Margot said. “I didn’t call ahead either – same reason. The kids are already across the hall at Brock’s.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go inside and sort this out.”

  Margot made tea and we took it to the armchairs by the window that overlooked the terrace. On the low table between our chairs was a huge bouquet of American Beauty roses in a crystal vase. A box of tacks was on the table beside the roses and Zack’s business card was propped against the box. I picked up the card and read the message Zack had written in his large, loping hand: Name your time and place.

  “Are you going to take him up on it?” I said.

  Margot chuckled. “I’ve never been able to stay mad at Zack. What he did was wrong, but I’ve made my share of mistakes. That said, Jo, I really do need some answers.”

  “Whatever answers you find will be connected to the bond between the original partners of Falconer Shreve,” I said. “In the years since Zack and I married, I’ve been struck time and time again by how fiercely they defend one another. Margot, Chris took his life because the woman who was carrying their child discovered Chris’s role in mishandling the firm’s trust funds, and as a result she had an abortion. After Chris’s suicide, Zack and the others made protecting his reputation their first priority.”

  Margot was a compassionate person, and as I told her about my meeting with Chris on the day he died and about my attempts with Angus to save Chris on the night of his death, her eyes filled. “God, what a tragedy,” she said. “For everyone. And Chris believed the mother of his child decided she couldn’t go through with the pregnancy because of what he’d done.”

  I nodded. “So much suffering,” I said. “Not long after the facts about the trust funds money came to light, Lily Falconer died. Under normal circumstances, even I would have realized how serious the implications of the defalcation were, but there was nothing normal about that summer. Everyone was torn apart. All that mattered was finding a respite from the pain.”

  “And Zack found that respite with you.”

  “He did, but he still finds it difficult to talk about the circumstances surrounding Chris’s death. I do too.”

  “So the subject is closed?”

  “Yes, and Margot, except for the day he found out about the defalcation, Zack and I have never discussed it. It simply never occurred to me to tell you about it. I hope you believe that.”

  “I do,” Margot said. “But Zack’s another matter.”

  “That’s a conversation the two of you will have to have,” I said. “He’d be devastated if you left Falconer Shreve.”

  “I’m not going to,” Margot said. “I care about the firm too. And I care about the people who work there. If Keating throws mud at us, we’ll just have to find a way to prove that we’re a firm with integrity and carry on.”

  My phone vibrated. I checked. “It’s Zack,” I said. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I picked up. “Where are you?”

  “At the gate. Just about to board.”

  “I’m at Margot’s. She’d like to talk to you.” I handed her the phone.

  “I’m giving you another chance, big man, but no more of that ‘some partners are more equal than other partners’ shit. We’re all on equal footing, and that includes the new equity partners.” Margot listened and purred, “God, I love it when you’re abject.” Her lips twitched towards a smile, but whatever Zack said next wiped the smile away. “What’s going on?” I said.

  Her forehead creased. “Zack’s texting us a video. He wants us to watch it and call him back.”

  We stood side by side to watch the video on my phone screen. When it ended, we turned to each other, perplexed. The video was of Annie Weber frogmarching Emmett Keating out of the dining room and into the foyer. Whoever took it had been standing close enough to capture the fury on Emmett’s face and the determination on Annie’s. The person with the camera had followed them to the front door, where Annie handed Emmett off to the doorman.

  I called Zack back. “Who sent it?”

  “Amicuscuriae@hotmail.com” he said. “Latin for ‘friend of the court,’ so probably a lawyer, and lawyers were not in short supply at the Scarth Club last night. If I were a betting man, which, of course, I am, I’d bet this little vignette is making the rounds in the legal community. Dee and Maisie and a few lawyer colleagues have already texted to say they received it.”

  “So the video is being sent to people outside Falconer Shreve,” I said. “Who would want to humiliate Emmett like this?”

  “Someone who wants to keep the pot boiling,” Zack said.

  “Darryl?”

  “It’s possible. But I don’t see what’s in it for him. When you were talking to him last night, did he say why he was at the dinner?”

  “Just that a friend gave him the ticket.”

  Zack chuckled. “Those tickets were a thousand dollars a pop – generous friend.”

  “That was my response too,” I said. “When I asked Darryl if the friend was someone I knew, he said the ticket was from ‘an admirer of Falconer Shreve,’ and then he gave me his Snidely Whiplash smile and said, ‘But aren’t we all?’ ”

  “Good old Darryl. Never passes up a chance to stick in the shiv,” Zack said. “Gotta go. Boarding time. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said. “Call me when you get to Pearson.”

  I looked at Margot. “Dee and Maisie already texted Zack to say they’d received the video.”

  Margot walked across the room, picked up her phone, and checked. “I got it too.” For a moment, she stared at her phone screen. “Amicus curiae,” she said. “Very lawyer-like. So I guess we start with every lawyer’s favourite question, Cui bono? Who profits?”

  “Whoever took the video,” I said
. “And there were a lot of people at the Scarth Club last night.”

  Margot stood. “Yet again, more questions than answers,” she said. “Time to tackle something where we’re guaranteed a happy outcome. Let’s go across the hall and tell Brock we’ve made up. He was worried.”

  —

  Brock had taken over our old condo after we left. It seemed strange to walk into a space as familiar to me as the back of my hand and see unmistakable evidence that someone else now lived there. The condo had been completely furnished when we moved in. All we had brought was our own art. At first, Brock had filled the empty spaces where our art had hung with framed black-and-white photos of football greats. Now the sports photographs had been replaced by two monumental pieces from Wally Dion’s Red Worker series. Margot and I had attended Dion’s first solo show at the MacKenzie Gallery together, and we had both been impressed by his huge portraits depicting First Nations peoples in their workplaces.

  “Two Wally Dions,” I said. “Pipe Carrier and Nurse Tracy – did you win the lottery?”

  Brock was on the floor playing trucks with Lexi, still in her Max suit, and stacking cups with Kai. “Margot thought the kids should be proud of their community,” he said.

  “Plus,” Margot drawled, “I always wanted a Wally Dion, but I ran out of wall space.”

  “I have wall space,” I said.

  Brock grinned at us. “I take it you two have worked everything out.”

  “Not quite everything,” Margot said. “But there are trucks to be driven and cups to be stacked. If Lexi and Kai will let us join you, we’ll fill you in.”

  Margot and I knelt on the floor with Brock and the kids, and between zooming trucks and arranging cups Margot showed Brock the video of Annie escorting Emmett from the Scarth Club. She also filled him in on Warren’s job offer.

  “Has Keating responded?” Brock said.

  “Not as far as I know,” I said. “And, Brock, at this point I don’t imagine Emmett Keating will be interested in talking to any of the partners. This morning, Zack stopped by with Warren to discuss the offer. Emmett wouldn’t even let Zack in his apartment – and that was before the video surfaced.”

  “Do you think Emmett would talk to me?” Brock said. “I was there when he made that scene with Delia, but I don’t have any official connection with the firm yet. If I explained that I had just come as a messenger to tell Emmett that everyone at Falconer Shreve felt sick about how the evening ended, he might feel less alone.”

  Margot covered Brock’s hand with her own. “You can be very persuasive,” she said. “Why don’t you give it a shot?”

  “Norine will have his contact information,” I said.

  Emmett’s phone number was unlisted, but Norine quickly produced it and Brock called. When Emmett didn’t pick up, Brock was sanguine. “I’ll keep trying,” he said. “And I’ll let you know if I get through.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I should go home and see what Taylor has planned for the day.” After I’d kissed Margot, Lexi, and Kai goodbye, Brock walked me to the elevator. “I miss our morning runs,” I said. “But living across the hall from one another seems like a perfect arrangement for you, Margot, and the kids.”

  “It’s great for all of us. The kids have two parents, and Margot and I have each other, and we’re free to have other relationships – at least in theory.”

  “But not in practice?” I said.

  “We’ve both gone out with other people, but there are never any sparks. Margot and I have more fun together with the kids than we do dating people we’re not interested in, so except for work we stick pretty close to home.”

  “Like an old married couple,” I said.

  Brock’s smile was surprisingly bashful. “There are worse things to be.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  The scene I walked into when I got home was a familiar one. Over the years, Gracie, Isobel, and Taylor had undertaken many projects. Seeing the three of them sitting together at our kitchen table plotting and planning brought a rush of memories: the summer they positioned inuksuit around the half moon of Lawyers’ Bay so that a traveller who had somehow wandered into our gated community could always find his or her way; the autumn I drove them around the countryside on a pumpkin-seeking mission for the rustic/elegant Halloween party they were planning; the December they mixed essential oils to create personality signature scents as gifts for friends, parents, and each other. Now Gracie and Izzie had joined Taylor to mull over how she could best use traditional Día de los Muertos decorations in her art project exploring the function of death images in the work of Frida Kahlo. The young women had come a long way from personality signature scents.

  “FedEx just brought all this,” Taylor said when she saw me. She gestured to the table. It was a fiesta of brilliantly coloured, elaborately dressed skeletons made of papier mâché, cardboard, foil, or wood and of skulls made of sugar, glass, plastic, and who knew what else.

  “Calacas and calaveras everywhere,” Gracie said. “Do you think you might have over-ordered?”

  “I think that’s a possibility,” Taylor said ruefully.

  Isobel pulled a skeleton dressed in early twentieth-century finery from a box, straightened the skeleton’s large and elaborate picture hat, and looked at the facial bones of the skull below it. Isobel’s expression was intent. “Who were you?” she said, and there was no whimsy in her question. She had always been a girl who needed answers.

  Taylor was happy to comply. “Catrina Calavera, the Skelton Dame,” she said. “She fascinated me too, so I did the research. A graphic artist named José Guadalupe Posada made the first image of her to mock the Mexican elite.”

  “To show them that death takes us all – rich or poor,” I said.

  “I guess,” Taylor said.

  Gracie reached into the box in which Catrina had been packed and pulled out another skeletal female figure, this one with her face framed in delicate paper flowers and her body draped in a gold lamé cape. The figure was small, no more than twenty centimetres high, and her arms were raised in benediction. The Catrina Calavera had been striking but was cheaply made. This was the work of a true artist.

  “That’s Santa Muerte,” Taylor said. “Sometimes she’s just called Bony Lady. Her followers – and online it says that there are millions of them – believe she’s a saint who will protect them in their lifetime and, when death comes, deliver them safely and lovingly to the afterlife.”

  Gracie’s face was grave. “It would nice to believe in Bony Lady,” she said.

  Isobel and Taylor had already started repacking the decorations. Gracie had spoken softly and they hadn’t heard her, but I had.

  I caught Gracie’s eye. “It would be nice to believe in her,” I said.

  Gracie touched my hand and then said to the other girls. “Taylor, is it okay if I keep Bony Lady for a while?”

  Taylor didn’t hesitate. “Keep her forever,” she said. “There are probably at least six more Santa Muertes in these boxes.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take good care of her.” Gracie looked thoughtfully at the doll she was holding. “Looks like you and I are joining forces, Santa Muerte.”

  Our house was on a double lot, and when we’d moved in the first time, we’d had a studio built for Taylor on the second lot. The arrangement worked for us all. Taylor had a spacious place with a north window where she could make art, and Zack and I knew she was safe and doing what she loved. Laden with FedEx boxes, the girls headed for Taylor’s studio. When I closed the door behind them, it occurred to me I’d skipped lunch. I found a bowl of chili in the fridge, stuck it in the microwave, picked up an old New Yorker, and thumbed through it until I found an article about Julianne Moore I’d started months earlier. By the time Isobel and Gracie returned, I’d finished both the chili and the article, and I’d made a list of the Julianne Moore movies Zack and I could curl up and watch when he got back from Toronto.

  “Taylor’s working on that portrait of the t
hree of you she’s giving you and Zack for Christmas,” Isobel said.

  “Have you seen it?” Gracie asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s top secret.”

  “It’s also really good. Have you ever noticed that your hands and Taylor’s are exactly the same,” Isobel said. “Graceful, but with the same long, powerful fingers.”

  “I know our feet are the same,” I said. “Because Taylor’s always borrowing my shoes.”

  Gracie laughed, but Isobel was determined to drive home her point. She cocked her head. “And there’s something about your mouth,” she said. “I’d never noticed it before, but the similarity is definitely there.”

  “There’s a theory that people who’ve been married for a long time grow to look alike,” I said. “There’s no blood relationship between Taylor and me, but she was four when I adopted her. We’ve been together more than ten years.”

  “Genetic osmosis,” Isobel said thoughtfully. “I wonder if such a thing is possible. I’ll go online and check it out. But right now, I’d better motor. I’ve got some shopping to do.”

  “Getting a jump on the holidays?” I said.

  Isobel shrugged into her jacket. “Nadine Perrault sent me a list of my sister’s favourites – the books Abby loved, the music, the flowers, and some other random things. A lot of Abby’s favourites are mine too.” Her forehead furrowed. “It’s difficult to think that I share traits with someone I never knew and never will know.”

  Gracie moved closer to her friend. “I’m worried that you’re counting too much on our evening.”

  Isobel’s smile was small and tentative. “I know,” she said, “but it’s hard not to hope.”

  After Isobel left, Gracie opened her backpack and slid Santa Muerte carefully into it. “I’d better hit the road too,” she said. “Today is Rose’s sister Betty’s birthday, and I’m going out to Standing Buffalo for supper.” Gracie was sociable by nature and she loved Rose and Betty, but as she started towards the door she was clearly troubled.