by Gail Bowen
Especially young girls,
Pretty, well-bred, and genteel,
Are wrong to listen to just anyone,
And it’s not at all strange,
If a wolf ends up eating them.
I say a wolf, but not all wolves
Are exactly the same.
Some are perfectly charming,
Not loud, brutal or angry,
But tame, pleasant, and gentle,
Following young ladies
Right into their homes, into their chambers,
But watch out if you haven’t learned that tame wolves
Are the most dangerous of all.
When I read our children the story, I’d always stopped before I came to Perrault’s moral. I hadn’t wanted my daughter to grow up believing that men were the enemy; I hadn’t wanted my sons to grow up seeing themselves as predators to be feared. I thought about my granddaughter, a girl whose smiles went everywhere, and wondered whether the world into which Madeleine had been born would allow for such a benign omission.
I braced myself for a blast of blowtorch rhetoric from Kevin, but it didn’t come. He was as shaken as I was. “Unspeakable,” he said. His hugely magnified eyes were anxious. “But this horror show is only going to make things worse. Not just for me,” he added quickly, “for all of us.”
I pushed my chair away from the desk and stood up.
“Are you bailing out on me?” Kevin asked.
“No,” I said. “We’ll sink or swim together on this one. I’m going to ask Solange to remove the link to ‘Red Riding Hood’ from her Web site.”
The door to Solange’s office was open. She had visitors: Livia Brook was there, her poppy shawl loosely knotted over a white turtleneck, and – bad luck for me – Ann Vogel was there, too. Six months earlier, Ann had claimed a new identity as Naama. Now it appeared she had metamorphosed again. As Naama, she had been a woman who flowed: shoulder-length hair that streamed behind her, diaphanous, ankle-length skirts and loosely cut, filmy blouses that floated as she walked through the halls. Now her hair was henna-burnished and buzzed into a Joan of Arc cut, and she was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and Converse high-tops. The attempt to ape Solange was an act of such teenage hero worship, I was embarrassed for both women, but Ann was beyond shame.
When she spotted me, her irises became pinpoints of loathing. “This is a private meeting,” she said.
“Then I won’t intrude,” I said. I smiled at Livia and walked over to Solange. “When you’re free,” I said, “I’d like to talk to you about your Web site.”
Solange nodded assent, but Ann Vogel wasn’t about to give anyone a graceful compromise. “The women in our group have no secrets from one another,” she said tightly, “but, of course, you wouldn’t understand about sisterhood.”
“I’m all for sorority,” I said. “I’m just not a big fan of hate groups. Incidentally, Ann, if I were you, I’d let the buzz cut grow out. I’m not sure the paramilitary look works for you.”
“You really are a bitch, Joanne.” She enunciated each word separately, Bette Davis style.
Solange raised a finger to silence her. “Joanne is not our enemy,” she said. She turned towards me; the bruised-eye pain of her gaze made it difficult not to look away. “You have a concern about the Web site?” she said. The words seemed pulled from her, as if even articulating a sentence caused her anguish. I thought of the French phrase Elle vit a reculons. She lives reluctantly.
It would have been unconscionable to add to her grief. “What you’ve done is perfect, Solange,” I said. “The tributes to Ariel strike exactly the right note. It’s the hot link to the ‘Red Riding Hood’ site that troubles me.”
Ann was clearly furious. “Why should we listen to you? You’ve already sided against us once.”
I tried to isolate her. “I’ve never had a quarrel with anyone but you,” I said. “You used Kevin Coyle to forward your own agenda, and I don’t want to see you doing the same thing with Ariel’s death.”
Solange’s eyes grew wide. “Ariel’s death must not be used,” she said.
I could feel the momentum shifting to me, and I pressed ahead. “No,” I agreed, “it mustn’t. The night of the vigil, Molly Warren told me that what she feared more than anything was having Ariel’s death politicized. This tragedy is deeply personal for all of us.”
Ann’s eyes glinted. I had linked the words “political” and “personal”; for a fanatical feminist the bait was as irresistible as catnip to a Siamese.
I hurried on before she could pounce. “I know the catechism,” I said. “I know that the personal is political, but the whole purpose of the Web page is to let the people who cared about Ariel share their memories and their sense of loss. Later, we can think about larger implications, but the focus now should be on Ariel. Besides, linking her page to the ‘Red Riding Hood’ site is placing Ariel’s death in a political context that might not even be accurate. Kyle Morrissey hasn’t been charged with her murder. From what I’ve heard he may never be.”
“What do you mean?” Livia said.
“I mean the case is weak,” I said. “It’s possible that Ariel was killed by someone else. For all we know the murderer is a woman.”
Ann took a step towards me. Her fists were clenched, and she was shaking with rage. “Get out,” she said.
We were on the edge of real ugliness, but Livia stepped between us. She was pale, but in control. “Joanne, we’ll reconsider the ‘Red Riding Hood’ hot link. I’ll make certain that we give your suggestion a fair hearing.”
“But I can’t stick around to argue my own case.”
Livia took my arm and led me out into the hall. When she spoke her voice was low and intimate. “Given the history you share with some of the women who created the Web site, perhaps it would be best to let them discuss it privately. Joanne, you know this department is all I have now. Trust me to do the right thing.” She leaned forward and kissed my cheek.
Whether it was the poignant reference to our shared past, the familiar smell of Pears soap, or the brush of cool silk I felt when her poppy shawl touched my arm, I was drawn into her orbit. “All right,” I said, “I’ll trust you.”
Kevin was still hunched over my computer when I got back. When he heard my step, he started. “Well…?”
“They’re going to discuss it,” I said.
“What do you think our chances are?”
I cringed at being included in Kevin’s possessive pronoun, but I smiled at him. “Livia says we have to trust her. And I do.”
He scowled. “Well, I don’t. Why would I trust a woman who has wanted my head on a plate for two years?” He shrugged. “You’ve just given me all the justification I need for spending some of my dwindling savings on surveillance.”
“You’re going to hire somebody?”
“Good God, no. I’m going to buy a computer. I’ll find it easier to trust those handmaidens of the victim culture if I can keep an eye on them.” He started for the door, but when he came to the threshold he turned. “Thank you for being my net.”
“You didn’t need a net, just a push.”
He grinned, revealing more silver fillings than I’d seen in twenty years. A man with ancient dental work, a lens held on by masking tape, a limitless supply of white, short-sleeved polyester shirts, and an uncertain future. My heart went out to him.
“Be careful, Kevin.”
“In the computer store?”
“Everywhere,” I said.
Alone in my office, I was edgy. I picked up the phone and dialled.
When I heard Ed Mariani’s blithe greeting, I felt as if I’d re-established contact with the world as I knew it.
“Can I buy you lunch?” I asked.
“Only if you promise to bring along the latest photos of Madeleine at the lake.”
“I haven’t even taken the film in yet,” I said.
“And you call yourself a grandmother,” he said. “But I’ll still eat lunch with you. Does noon at
the Faculty Club suit?”
“Noon is fine,” I said, “but let’s go off-campus. I’ve had enough of this place.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is. Ed, have you seen that Web page Solange has created for Ariel?”
“I didn’t even know it existed. I haven’t been at the university since last week.”
“Count your blessings,” I said. “But I’d be grateful if you’d check it out and another site it’s linked to: ‘Red Riding Hood.’ ”
“ ‘Red Riding Hood’ – that’s intriguing. You do know, don’t you, that both Luciano Pavarotti and Charles Dickens are on record as saying they identified strongly with that little girl. I’m past the age for tripping through the woods with a picnic basket, but if it pleases you, I’ll be more than happy to give the site a whirl. Now about lunch… have you got time for Druthers?”
“I do if you do,” I said.
“I have all the time in the world,” he said.
The comment was more than a pleasantry. The amount of time that elapsed between the placing of an order and the arrival of food at Druthers was legendary. So were the short fuses of the restaurant’s father-and-son chefs. More than one patron’s meal had ended abruptly when the father, hurling curses, exited through the restaurant’s front door, and the son, also hurling curses, exited through the back door. But the menu was inventive, the food invariably excellent, and the atmosphere, when father and son were in accord, sublime.
That spring afternoon, as I walked through the front door of the old converted house in the Cathedral district, it appeared that Ed and I were in luck. James and James Junior, father and son, greeted me with smiles and ushered me to the cool peace of the Button Room, my favourite of the restaurant’s three small dining rooms. The Button Room took its name from its walls, which were hung with framed shadow boxes filled with antique buttons of incredible variety: military buttons of shiny brass bearing the insignia of once-proud units; mourning buttons of jet or of hair taken from the head of the newly deceased and woven into stiff discs; tiny buttons of mother-of-pearl or satin that the fingers of eager bridegrooms had fumbled undone as they claimed their trembling brides. The linen at Druthers was always snowy, and the flowers, exotic. Today a single fuchsia orchid blazed in our bud vase.
Ed rose when he saw me. “I’ve ordered martinis,” he said. “After seeing that Web site, I thought that we needed more than a Shirley Temple.”
James Junior brought the martinis, ice blue with two olives apiece, handed us the menus and announced the specials: wild mushroom pate; grilled tomato gazpacho, sweetbreads Druthers, mixed greens; coffee chocolate-chunk cookies.
I didn’t even open the menu. First, the Rombauers and now Druthers. It was obvious that sweetbreads were in the air, and I never bucked synchronicity. Ed followed my lead.
After James Junior withdrew with our orders, Ed raised his glass. “To sanity,” he said. “Although it appears to be fast disappearing from our troubled world. That ‘Red Riding Hood’ site is heartbreaking, Jo. To think of Ariel being one of that long, sad line…”
For a moment, we were both silent. Wrapped in our private thoughts, we sipped our martinis. They were excellent but ineffectual. The liquor burned, but it didn’t wipe out the memory of that long, sad line of girls and women, and of Ariel among them.
Finally, Ed broke the silence.
“I have some news,” he said. “Kyle Morrissey wasn’t a stranger to Ariel. Val Massey called me this morning. He’s working for the Leader Post, and he’s been assigned to Ariel’s story.”
Val Massey was an old student of ours. “How’s he doing?” I asked.
Ed smiled. “Dazzlingly. Bob Woodward in the making. At any rate, when he found out Kyle Morrissey had lived next door to Ariel…”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “There’s nothing next door to Charlie and Ariel’s place but an X-rated video store.”
Ed nodded. “ EXXXOTICA. That’s where Kyle lives, or at least lived until December when he ran into a little trouble with the police.”
“The assault charge that went away,” I said.
Ed raised an eyebrow. “And who’s your source?”
“Rosalie’s betrothed,” I said. “And Detective Robert Hallam says this case doesn’t feel right to him.”
“That’s pretty much Val’s take, too,” Ed said. “He’s spent some time with Kyle’s aunt, Ronnie. Apparently, there’s something a little weird there, but Val says Ronnie is quite an advocate for her boy, and she’s managed to convince Val that Kyle’s only feelings towards Ariel were ones of gratitude.”
“Gratitude for what?”
“Until December, Kyle worked at EXXXOTICA. It’s the family business. Anyway, after Kyle’s narrow escape, his aunt Ronnie decided that the kind of clientele who came in to rent triple-X movies, might not be creating an ideal milieu for her nephew, and that it might be wise to get Kyle out of harm’s way.”
“Good decision,” I said.
“According to Val, it was,” Ed agreed. “Kyle liked the job he found with the air-conditioning company. Incidentally, he had listed Ariel as one of his references. Apparently, she helped him find the place he moved into too. It’s in those student apartments over on Kramer Boulevard.”
I took a deep breath. “Ed, did Val mention the possibility that Ariel’s interest in Kyle might have been more than that of a friend?”
Ed stiffened. “I take it you have a reason for asking that question.”
“I do,” I said. “Mieka and I had a heart-to-heart at the lake. Ariel was pregnant when she died, and the father of her baby wasn’t Charlie Dowhanuik.”
“You’re not suggesting that Kyle Morrissey…?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” I said. “All I know is that Mieka believes that Ariel wasn’t romantically involved with the father of her baby.”
“An accident?” Ed said.
I shook my head. “A helping friend. And that opens the field to a number of possibilities. I wondered if Kyle Morrissey was one of them. I saw his photo in the paper. He’s a good-looking man.”
Ed gave me a small smile. “A bodybuilder, dark and beautiful, but not my type, and not Ariel’s. According to Val, when it came to brains Kyle Morrissey was paddling in the shallow end of the gene pool.”
“Not swift?”
“Not swift,” Ed said. “And not ‘helping friend’ material. Ariel was a compassionate woman. If she thought Kyle Morrissey had been roughed up by the system, she would have done what she could to help him start over. That might have included helping him find a job and an apartment; it would not have included asking him to father her child.” Ed ran his finger over the frilled edge of the catelaya bloom. “I’m no expert on these matters, but what I don’t understand is why Ariel had to seek out anybody. She had it all: beauty, brains, grace. If she wanted to have a baby, why didn’t she just wait for the right man and get one the old-fashioned way?”
“I think she felt she was running out of time,” I said.
Ed frowned. “She was twenty-seven. You can’t be talking about biological time.”
“No,” I said. “I think Ariel felt she might be running out of time to live the life she wanted.”
“And Charlie Dowhanuik wasn’t part of that life?”
“Apparently not.”
At that moment, James Junior arrived with the wild mushroom pate, and out of deference to the wizardry in the kitchen, Ed and I moved to lighter topics: the weekend at the lake, a wood sculpture Ed and Barry were having installed on their deck, Madeleine’s perfection. But despite our banter, the martinis, a half-litre of Pinot Noir, and sweetbreads so succulent even the Rombauers couldn’t have improved upon them, Ed’s question hung in the air between us, a shadow at the feast.
When we left Druthers, Ed looked up at the high blue sky. “Given the morning we’ve put in, I suggest we both take an afternoon off,” he said. “I’m going to make myself a pot of camomile, stretch out in the hammock, and get
back to A la recherche du temps perdu.”
“Do you know I’ve never managed to get past the first chapter of that book?”
“I’ve never made it past page three,” Ed said cheerfully, “but on the first truly sweet day of May, I always try. It’s my summer ritual. And how are you going to extract the joy from this glorious day?”
“Checking out someone else’s remembrance of things past,” I said. “I’m going to try to get Kyle Morrissey’s aunt to talk to me.”
The only parking space I could find was in front of the used-furniture mart. There was a special on inflatable furniture – just in time for summer. I passed it up and continued down the street towards the video store.
The old lady was at her perch at the open window upstairs, and as soon as she saw me, she called out. “Nobody’s home at the dead girl’s house,” she said, “but I know things you’ll want to hear.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Come up and find out,” she said.
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
Not an errant weed or faded bloom marred the perky, girl-next-door charm of Ariel and Charlie’s bungalow on Manitoba Street. As a house-minder, Father Hill’s price was obviously beyond rubies. The lawn in front of EXXXOTICA could have used his ministrations. The dusty shoots that made their way through its hard-packed dirt were ready for extreme unction, but the woman down on her knees in front of the porn video store wasn’t praying. She had a razor blade between her fingers and she was scraping at her front window. Someone had papered it with photocopies of the image I had seen on Ariel’s Web page: the black background, the stylized sunflower, and the words “Never Forget.”
The woman craned her neck to give me the once over. She was my age, with a mane of waist-length sun-streaked hair, a narrow face, close-set green eyes, the leathery tan of a rodeo rider, and an unusually large Adam’s apple. She was wearing jeans, a very brief white halter top, and a look of abject disgust. She tapped at the glass with the razor blade. “As if I ever could forget,” she said in a voice that could have been either an alto or a baritone. “Look at the mess they made of my window.”