by Jay Forman
“I don’t think we have another option. We have so much lake frontage that this year’s tax bill is going to be more than I’ll earn in the whole year.”
Those rich stars had attracted the attention of more than just the paparazzi – the township had noticed their wallets and started jacking up the tax rates with each new addition to the celebrity roll. “If I do more expose articles we might be able to swing it.” I could hold off on buying the steering wheel in my car. “And we could ask Steve to chip in.”
“His only interest in this place is what he can get out of it, you know that. He’s not big at putting into it.”
We shared ownership with my darling brother and Auntie Em was right – he was more interested in getting value out of the property than valuing it. “I got offered a contract to do a series of articles for Canada Tourism, and government contracts always pay really well. I could add a coast-to-coast trip to my schedule this summer and get the money out of the federal government this time. They’d pay before the final tax bill’s due.”
“But what about all the other trips you’ve got planned? Wouldn’t that complicate your schedule?”
“A bit.” It would totally obliterate my schedule, but Auntie Em didn’t need to know that. “I’d find a way to make it work.” I shook my backpack upside down beside Auntie Em and let all the little balls of scrunched up paper that were my hastily jotted down notes fall onto the bed. When was I going to find the time to turn those notes into an article? Would I be able to work when I was at Berkshire? For just a second I envied the West Indian Whistling ducks on that uninhabited cay in the Bahamas. Sure, their existence was threatened, but Auntie Em and I were facing a type of extinction, too. And we didn’t get to live in a place that hadn’t been ruined by humans yet.
“Let’s sleep on it; it’s a big decision.” Auntie Em stood up, picked up the two balled notes that had fallen on the floor, and dropped them back onto the pile on the bed. “Oh, before I forget, be extra careful with your garbage. The bears have come out and they’re having a hard time finding food because of the heavy snow load we had this year. Hazel noticed that they’ve been digging down to the acorn mass near the point.”
“Yeah, about that, I won’t be making much garbage. Jack’s talked me into helping him with something at Berkshire and I’ll be staying there for...,” For what? A few days? A week? “...a bit.” Hopefully, a very brief bit.
Auntie Em’s wispy white eyebrows popped up above her half-glasses. “You? Staying at Berkshire? What did Jack use to get you to agree to that? A sledgehammer?”
“A sledgehammer?” What was she talking about?
“It must have been a big one to knock off that boulder you’ve been carrying around on your shoulder.”
“Auntie Em!”
“Don’t Auntie Em me. You’ve been angry at the place for over twenty years, unwilling to acknowledge the good that came out of it.”
“The good?” Oh no, she did not just say that.
“Yes, the good.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest and tilted her head slightly to the right. It was her don’t mess with me pose.
I was about to get one of her off-the-top-of-the-charts lectures. They didn’t come often and usually only burst out when she was under stress. The impending property tax bill was obviously worrying her more than she was showing, so I’d take whatever she was about to dish out if it made her feel better. It wouldn’t make me feel better, her lectures never did, and this one promised to be especially lethal if it was starting off with the supposed good that had come out of my time at Berkshire.
“Do you think your life would have been any better if you’d stayed at Anishinaabeg High? Not one single reporter found you when you were at Berkshire. Berkshire locked them out and opened so many doors for you; doors that you didn’t even know existed. Your English teacher, Mrs. What’s-her name...,”
“Kerwin.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Kerwin. She encouraged your writing in a way that no overworked teacher ever had the time to when you were jammed in a classroom with thirty-six other students. Would you have even considered applying to the University of Toronto if she hadn’t pushed you? And wasn’t it the geography teacher who put the bee in your bonnet about travel writing? He opened the world to you when he gave you that book. You used to go on and on about that Monty Python man’s adventures. And then there’s Jack.”
Here it came. I knew Jack’s name would come up. It always did when she was on a roll. I sat down and started opening the paper balls and flattening them out over my knee.
“That man loves you, young lady, and you are a complete fool if you think he’s going to keep waiting for you if you continue to have trysts all over the world with some man you barely know.”
I smacked a freshly flattened note down hard on top of the growing stack beside me. “I’ve known Hunter for years...,”
“You don’t know him,” she scoffed. “You can’t possibly know someone you only see once or twice a year. And, more importantly, he doesn’t know you. Jack does know you. And, Lord help him, he loves you completely. Mark my words, if you’re not careful someone else will snap him up. It happened once with that dolt Lisa. It can happen again.”
“Jack understands...,”
“No, you don’t understand. There are times when everyone needs someone to lean on. You can’t possibly begin to imagine how hard it is to have the weight of everything resting on only you.”
Oh, I could imagine, all right. I’d been living that way for most of my life.
Her breathing became jerky, almost as if she was gasping for air, and her voice was quivering. “Right now you’ve got the two of us, but I won’t last forever, and Jack won’t wait forever. What are you going to do then?” Tears started trickling down her cheeks, and seeing them instantly washed away my simmering anger.
I jumped up and ran across the room to wrap her up in my arms. This wasn’t about me, or Berkshire, or even Jack. “I miss him, too.” Uncle Doug had been gone for almost two years, but I hadn’t realised that for her the loss of her best friend was still a fresh as it had been the day we buried him.
She sniffled onto my shoulder. “Don’t screw it up with Jack again, Lee.”
I didn’t screw it up – he did, a little voice in my head cried.
*
Instead of luxuriating in the thickly padded reclining leather seats in the back of Jack’s new plane, I sat on the floor of the cockpit. George and I had managed to get Jack into his seat with an awful lot of cursing and twisting.
“...and I looked at her social media footprint...watch the speed, you’re approaching ten thousand,” Jack pointed at something on the front console. “She wasn’t as active as most kids her age, but she did post an awful lot of selfies; especially ones of her wearing some very expensive designer clothes. I didn’t see any photos or posts or tweets about Pam’s boy, Ethan, so maybe Dick was wrong about them being an item. Nothing about that girl Mademoiselle mentioned, either.”
“What’s Erica’s story?”
Jack nervously watched George as he pushed the yoke forward and started our descent. “She’s running her father’s company now, took full control after he had a stroke about ten years ago. They make guidance systems for missiles and Erica was responsible for their product line expansion into suspension systems for military vehicles. Net worth of about twenty-five billion.”
That kind of money could afford a lot of property taxes.
“Before she got involved in the company full-time she was into horses. She was on the Canadian equestrian team for at least one Summer Olympics.”
For the first time ever I started to think that Erica might have a redeeming quality – liking animals.
“But she pushed her horse so hard in her last event that it died just after finishing. She’s rumoured to run her employees just as hard. Her nickname is The Ball Buster.”
So much for that one redeeming quality. “Maybe she pushed Kayla too hard over something?�
��
“Maybe. She’s also been through three husbands. Mark’s the only one who had sperm strong enough to survive in her.”
“How did they meet?”
“He was on the swim team and represented us at two Summer Olympics, bringing home a silver and a bronze. He retired from amateur sports and went into sportscasting for a while. And he dutifully showed up on Erica’s arm for social functions. He disappeared for a long time after they split up. I think that’s part of the reason why he’s so upset. He’s feeling guilty; he disappeared from Kayla’s life, too. He reappeared when his novel hit the New York Times Bestseller list”
Jack had a car waiting for us at the private terminal for business jets. In-between telling me how to drive and giving me directions, he told me about Pam Grey’s life as we slowly made our way along the 401 across the top of the city.
“... her husband, Greg Horscroft, is about ten or twelve years older than us. He was a jockey and worked as a trainer for the equestrian team. He and Pam got married about a year after we graduated. Their son, Ethan, was in Kayla’s class. They own Chestnut Stables, which is where the Berkshire horses are stabled. Greg teaches lessons to some Berkshire kids. Turn left at the lights.”
It didn’t surprise me that Erica lived in the Bridle Path neighbourhood. She’d want to make her wealth and power visible. No classy brick mansion on one of the winding tree-lined streets of Rosedale or Forest Hill would be visible enough for a person like her.
“She’s on Park Lane,” Jack told me as we waited to turn left onto Post Road from Bayview Avenue. “I’m not sure how involved Pam is in the stables’ business, but I know it was her money that financed the purchase of it.”
I turned left, then right on the first street.
“Keep going. She’s just south of Lawrence.”
The suspension in the car didn’t like the way I wasn’t slowing down for the speed bumps on Erica’s street.
“That’s it. The one on the right.”
I wanted to laugh. Erica had built herself a mini replica of the Palace of Versailles. Its excessiveness fit the neighbourhood, but definitely wasn’t typical of the homes most single parents lived in. At least, not any of the single parents I’d ever met. What possible use could she have for a home that had to be ten or twelve thousand square feet big? My little house had been home to a family of four at one time and we’d never felt crowded (except on mornings when we all had to be somewhere, and had to wait for our turn to use the one and only bathroom). I parked right smack in front of her double-wide front door.
“There’s a wheelchair in the trunk, but I’m not sure what good it’ll do,” Jack said as he looked at the front steps that led up to Erica’s front door.
“You can lean on me.”
He turned to look at me. “Are you really okay?”
“Uh-huh.” I wasn’t, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it. I couldn’t allow my vulnerability to show. I didn’t know if I’d be able to lock it tightly away again.
I forced myself to remember Erica’s challenge – “She doesn’t have the guts to face me.” Oh, yeah? Just watch me! I’d circled the globe by myself, more than once. I’d driven myself across the Namib Desert (probably not my smartest move, but I’d done it anyway). I’d survived a plane crash in Alaska. I’d gone diving with sharks, without a cage. Good pep talk. Talking to Erica was going to be a piece of cake. “Let’s do it.”
A uniformed maid answered the door. She was all set to leave us waiting alone in the front foyer, right next to the security system panel that looked just as complicated as the equipment in the cockpit of Jack’s plane, until I asked her where she was from in the Philippines. She looked surprised by my question and even more surprised by my reply to it.
“I’ve been to Mati! I learned how to kite surf at Dahican Beach. The sunrises there are spectacular. Do you get to go home often?”
“Every Christmas,” she smiled, but that smile quickly flat-lined as we both heard the click-click-click of a pair of high heels coming down the grand central staircase.
“That will be all, Anjelica.”
Anjelica scurried away.
Erica approached, walking straight to Jack and giving him an air kiss on each cheek. “You look like shit, Jack.”
“Can’t say I feel much better than that, either.”
Maybe Kayla’s nose wouldn’t have been perfected by a plastic surgeon? Erica’s pointy proboscis still hadn’t been. She was wearing pencil thin black pants and a sweater that looked as if an artist had thrown his palette at her chest and thought Good enough, it’s art.
“Lee.”
“Erica.” My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel the blood pumping in my toes.
“Let’s get this over with.” She turned and walked into the living room on our left.
She’d kept the French flavour strong with her interior decorating. The furniture looked too fragile and expensive for people to actually sit on. A beautiful bronze figurine of a horse and colt standing close to each other on a marble base sat on the spindly legged table at the end of the settee I helped Jack lower onto. On another little table was a blue and white vase that looked very much like something from the Ming Dynasty (and it probably was). Erica stood in front of the large fireplace. Behind her, above the mantle, was an oil painting of a horse standing in a meadow that looked like something George Stubbs had painted (and he probably had).
“I’m sorry about your daughter, Erica.” I meant it. No matter what she’d done to me, she didn’t deserve something as awful as losing a child.
The tall grandfather clock in the far corner of the room tick-tick-ticked.
“Well? Get on with it. Ask your questions.”
“Erica, we’re here to help. We’re just trying to find the truth...,”
“Bullshit, Jack! You’re here because of Mark. I already know the truth.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Kayla was weak, just like Mark. She made some very stupid choices and didn’t have the strength to deal with the consequences of her actions.”
Jack jumped right in. “Are you talking about the sex video on the USB key?”
Erica looked only slightly more than surprised than I felt. If his company’s diamond mines ever ran dry (or whatever it was called when a mine ran out of diamonds) he could move to Vegas and make another fortune. I’d never seen anyone bluff so well. If I hadn’t known better I would have believed that he’d looked at the supposedly pornographic video on the USB key that Mademoiselle had told me about.
“How do you know about that?” Erica slipped up and showed some emotion other than anger; a mix of shock and fear.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Was it that idiot Jocelyn?” Anger was taking over again. “I bet it was. She was told to keep her mouth...,”
“I haven’t spoken to Jocelyn, neither has Lee.”
“It couldn’t have been Mark. If he knew about it he would have blabbed to the police and they would have already been here asking to see it...,”
“Don’t you think they should?” Jack asked. “It might have something to do with what happened.”
“Of course it did! It’s why she killed herself. She did it to protect me. She knew how badly I’d be hurt, how embarrassed I’d be.”
I blinked a couple of times because I wasn’t sure if I was seeing right. Were those tears welling in Erica’s eyes?
“Excuse me, Ms. Talbot,” Anjelica said softly from the doorway. She was holding a cordless phone.
“Not now, Anjelica!”
“It’s Mrs. Horscroft. She says it’s urgent.”
If those had been tears they’d turned to icicles. Erica stormed across the room and snatched the phone out of Anjelica’s hand. “I’m busy, Pam. I’ll have to call you ba ... What? ... Since when?” She walked out of the room and started to talk so softly that I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“Nice bluff,” I whispered.
“Interesting reaction to it, wasn’t
it?”
“I’ll say.”
“Got any great ideas on how we can...,” Jack stopped talking as Erica’s heels announced her approach.
The bright colours on Erica’s sweater stood out even more against her now very pale face. “Ethan’s missing.” She slowly sat down on the other end of the settee that Jack was on. “No one’s been able to find him since lunch. What if Ethan was the one in the video with Kayla?”
Chapter Seven
“How could she have been so stupid? Why did she let herself get caught up in something like this again?” Erica reached out and gently cupped her hand over the back of the bronze colt on the table beside her.
“Something like what?” Unlike Jack, I wasn’t good at bluffing. I couldn’t pretend to know what Erica was talking about and I’d never had any qualms about admitting what I didn’t know. Experience had shown me that being open to new information, being curious, was the best way to start exploring anything – whether it be a location or a personal story.
Our eyes didn’t meet, they locked in battle. I could almost feel the temperature in the room drop as she looked right at me, but I didn’t flinch or blink. Given the pale coldness of her decor I mentally pictured two polar bears circling before a fight. I waited for her to make the first move.
“Why should I tell you? So you can testify to get a murderer off – again?”
“Erica, don’t.”
Neither one of us acknowledged Jack. He was outside our ring, a mere spectator.
Erica’s cheap swipe had barely grazed me. “I told the truth. He was with me that night. He couldn’t have killed your aunt.”
“The jury didn’t believe you about the night he killed Connie Gibson.”
“I know they didn’t. But I was telling the truth about that night, too.”
“Truth? Lee Smith – correction – Lee Saddler ... telling the truth? So tell me, how often do you visit your family in Lucerne now? Have you even been there yet? And what about your travel articles? Do you actually go to those places, or do you just make those up, too?”