Murder at the Mendel

by Gail Bowen

  I could hear Mieka’s sharp intake of breath. “He tried to kill his own wife and child?” The elves and Santas on her sweater were rising and falling rapidly. A man who could murder his family was a long way from Mieka’s safe and sunny world. “He must have been a monster,” she said finally.

  “No,” I said, “he wasn’t a monster. In fact, until he got sick, he was one of the most terrific people I ever knew. I used to love just being in the same room with him. Living was so much fun for him. He was so interested in everything; he could be as passionate about the right way to cook corn on the cob as he was about the way Sally built her sand castles or the way he made art.

  “Then he had this massive stroke and everything changed. He used to love to swim. When I close my eyes, I can still see him running down the hill from the cottage and diving off the end of the dock into the lake. He never hesitated. Suddenly he couldn’t even walk without help. He’d been a great storyteller, and of course that was gone, too. After the stroke it was painful to watch him try to form a word. He was dependent on Nina and Sally for everything. He couldn’t even feed himself properly. And, of course, worst of all, he couldn’t paint. For a man who had lived every day as intensely as Des had, I guess the future just looked …”

  “Unacceptable?” asked Mieka in a high, strained voice. “So unacceptable that he decided to kill two innocent people?”

  “But he didn’t kill them, Miek. My father saved Nina when he gave her the ipecac, and Sally had saved her own life by throwing up. They lived. Although for a while, I don’t think they much wanted to. You know, for a time, I didn’t want to. People talk about their world being turned upside-down. That was how it felt for me. As if suddenly everything had come loose from its moorings.

  “That was the worst September. It rained and rained, and I was so alone and so scared. My father had to deal with everything: the police, the funeral, Nina and Sally at the hospital, his own patients. I never saw him. I remember when he came up to my room to get me for the funeral, there was a split second when I didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t so much that he’d aged as that life seemed to have seeped out of him. He didn’t have his heart attack until that next August, but I think your grandfather started to die when Desmond Love died.”

  “And my grandmother was drinking,” Mieka said, a statement not a question.

  “Yeah, she was drinking a lot that summer, and the ‘tragedy at the lake,’ as the papers called it, really propelled her into the major leagues. I felt as if I didn’t have anybody. Nina had always been there before, but she was in the hospital for weeks after Des died.”

  Mieka looked puzzled. “I thought you said she was okay.”

  “Physically she was, but she didn’t seem to recover the way she was supposed to. I kept asking my father when I could see her and he kept saying soon, she just needed rest. I guess I believed him because I wanted to. Then one night, I overheard my parents fighting. Your grandmother had never liked Nina and she was screaming that Nina was faking her grief, playing on my father’s sympathy and my gullibility to keep us from seeing how things really had been at the lake. For once, my father didn’t just let her rant. He told her that Nina had suffered a complete breakdown and he told her –oh, God, Mieka, it’s been thirty years but I still feel sick when I think of this – my father said that morning when he’d gone by Nina’s room on his rounds, she’d been crouched naked in the corner, tearing at her own flesh with her fingernails – like an animal in a trap, that’s the phrase he used.”

  Across from me, Mieka winced. “It’s hard to imagine. Nina’s always so controlled.”

  “I know. Anyway, after that they were careful not to leave her alone, but I guess they didn’t think Sally was in any danger. I don’t know how else it could have happened, because one day Sally just walked out of the hospital. They found her with Izaak Levin.”

  “The man in the picture with you and Sally,” Mieka said. “His name was in the show catalogue, too.”

  “He used to come to the cottage for a few weeks every summer. I was about to say he was a friend of Des Love’s, but that wasn’t the connection. Izaak was Nina’s friend first. In fact, he was the one who introduced Nina to Des Love. Nina’s an American, you know, from New York, and Izaak knew her there. Anyway, once Sally got to Izaak’s place, she refused to leave. When my father tried to get her to come home to our house, she became hysterical. She said she was never going back to the house on Russell Hill Road. She was going to leave the city and never come back. And, of course, that’s exactly what she did.”

  Mieka looked at me. “Sally was what? Thirteen? Why would any mother let a thirteen-year-old child move in with someone else?”

  “For one thing the arrangement Nina and Izaak worked out was supposed to be temporary – just until Nina got better. There was a school of the arts for gifted children in New York, and they enrolled Sally there. She was supposed to come back at Christmas.”

  “Except she didn’t come back at Christmas,” Mieka said.

  “She never came back,” I said. “She never phoned. She never wrote. She just cut us all off as if we’d never existed. I must have written her a hundred letters that first year, but I never heard a word from her. Nobody did, not even Nina. She told me that Izaak kept her informed about Sally’s progress, but she never heard a word from her own daughter.”

  Mieka looked puzzled. “Why would Nina let the situation go on? Can you imagine letting me just walk out of your life when I was thirteen?”

  I smiled at her. “I can’t imagine letting you walk out of my life ever. But that’s us. Nina and Sally always had difficulties. When I think about it now, a lot of it was Des. He loved Sally so much and, of course, he was her teacher as well as her father. I think sometimes Nina must have felt excluded.”

  “All the same, Sally was Nina’s daughter,” Mieka said.

  “It was a bad time for everybody,” I said. “And in bad times, people don’t always think clearly. It must have been hard for Nina to know what was best for Sally, because no one could really understand why she’d turned against us. My dad’s explanation was that Sally was so filled with rage at Des for leaving her that her feelings for everyone and every place connected with him were tainted.”

  Mieka looked thoughtful. “That makes sense to me. Don’t forget, Mum, she was only a kid. Thirteen – the same age as Angus is now. That’s pretty young to think things through.”

  “Oh, Mieka, I know. But then the next year, when your grandfather died, Sally didn’t even come to the funeral. Izaak Levin came, but he said Sally refused to come to Toronto. He had to leave her with his sister in New York. For a long time I found it hard to forgive her for that. My dad would have done anything for Sally, and she must have known how much I needed her. If I hadn’t had Nina, I don’t know if I could have made it.”

  Mieka’s face was sad, “Did you ever hear Sally’s side of the story?”

  “No, I never did. When sally and I finally got together again last summer, we were both pretty careful not to bring up the past. But I’m beginning to wonder now if that wasn’t a mistake. There’s a part of me that’s still mad at her, you know. And that’s not fair to either of us.”

  “Talk to her,” Mieka said simply.

  I stood up. “Well, doctor, if the therapy session’s over, we’d better get back to our wrapping. But come here and let me give you a hug first – for being so smart. I’ll throw in dinner, too, if you want. I think I’ve got a pan of lasagna in the freezer.”

  She stood up and stretched. “Sounds good. I’ll consider it a professional fee. And, Mum, don’t forget to hear Sally’s side of things. I think after all this time, it may finally be her turn.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  On the morning before Christmas I was pouring myself a second cup of coffee and thinking about making French toast for breakfast when the phone rang. Until the night of Sally’s opening, I hadn’t heard that low, gravelly voice for thirty years, but I knew who it was
immediately. You don’t forget anything about a man you dreamed about through the heat-shimmering days and moonlit nights of your sixteenth summer.

  Izaak Levin’s invitation had the polish that only practice brings. “Joanne, forgive the early morning call please, but in all the excitement the other night I didn’t have a chance to make an arrangement to see you again. I know this is Christmas Eve, and I’m sure you have plans, but I thought perhaps between Christmas and New Year’s we could have dinner together and share our remembrance of things past.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” I said, “but my kids and I are going to Greenwater to ski that week. Can I have a rain check?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll call early in the new year. I won’t let you slip away again …”

  As I hung up, I could feel my face flush. There was a mirror on the wall above the phone, and I gave myself a hard, critical look. My hair was the same ashy blond it had always been, but now it took more than lemon juice and sunshine to keep it that way. There were fine lines in the skin around my eyes, and my face was fuller than it had been when I was young, but, on the whole, I was comfortable enough with what I saw. “Not Sally Love, but not bad,” I said to my reflection. “Izaak Levin would be a fool to pass you up this time.” When the phone rang again, I was still smiling.

  The smile didn’t last long. Sally was on the line, sounding edgy but in control.

  “Jo, somebody just called to tell me there was a fire last night at womanswork. I should go down and see how bad the damage is. Would you come with me?” There was silence for a moment and when she spoke again, her voice had lost its authority. “I really could use some company, Jo. Can you meet me there in half an hour?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  I went upstairs, dressed in a heavy wool sweater and jeans, woke Peter to tell him I’d be back before lunch, started out the door, then came back and made Peter come downstairs. “In case of a fire,” I said, vulnerable again.

  When I backed the car out of the garage, it was snowing, theatrical lacy flakes that drifted steadily through the December air and made the city look like a scene from an old Andy Williams Christmas special. It was a little after eight-thirty, and the traffic was light as I drove across the bridge toward the centre of the city.

  Fourteenth Street was a pretty street of pre-war houses, restored and fitted out as offices for architects and fast-track law firms; womanswork was in the middle of the block. What I remembered was a two-storey grey clapboard building, simple and elegant. It wasn’t elegant any more, but as I looked through the smoky, snowy haze at what had once been Sally’s gallery, I was struck by the fact that even the ruins of the building had a certain perverse beauty. Water from the fire hoses had frozen in fantastic patterns against the charred skeleton, and snow had begun to layer itself on the burned wood. When I squinted against the smoke, the gallery looked like a Christmas gingerbread house.

  It didn’t take long to spot Sally. She was standing in what had once been the front door to the gallery talking to a firefighter. She was wearing the Navajo blanket coat she’d worn the night of the opening, and its purple, turquoise, orange and blue were a splash of brilliance in the grey. She came over as soon as she saw me.

  “Arson,” she said. “At least that’s what they think. I’m supposed to come up with a list of my enemies. Maybe I should just give them the Saskatoon phone book and a pin.” She sounded as strong and defiant as ever, but when she raked her hand through her hair, I noticed her fingers were trembling. Up close, her face looked drawn despite its tan. There was a smudge of soot under her cheekbone. I reached out and rubbed it with my mitt.

  She smiled. “Oh, God, Jo, I feel awful. I need a five-mile run or a stiff drink.”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s nine o’clock straight up. I think the sun must be over the yardarm somewhere. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  As we started toward our cars, I heard a shout behind us. It was the young firefighter Sally had been talking to. He ran up and handed something to her.

  “I thought maybe this might have some sentimental meaning for you,” he said.

  Suddenly the wind picked up, and as the three of us stood looking down at what he had brought, the snow swirled around us. It was a porcelain doll, obviously old. Not much was left of her clothes, and her hair had been burned so that only a scorched frizz shot out around her face. But her face was intact, and her eyes, as fiercely blue as Sally’s own, looked up defiantly out of the sooty porcelain.

  Sally slid the doll through the opening between the top buttons of her coat so that it rested against her chest, then she leaned over and kissed the firefighter on the cheek.

  “Thanks,” she said, and she started to walk across the lawn toward the street. I looked at the young man standing in the snow, transfixed. Sally was old enough to be his mother, but the look on his face wasn’t the kind of look a man has after his mother kisses him.

  “Dream on,” I said under my breath, and then I put my hands in my pockets and ran through the snow to catch up with Sally.

  She wanted to go back to her studio on the river bank. I said I’d follow her. The streets were clogged with snow and last-minute shoppers, so it was after nine-thirty when I pulled up behind Sally in front of her place on Saskatchewan Crescent.

  She called it a studio, but really it was a one-storey bungalow on a fashionable street of pricey older houses. Years before, Sally had torn down walls and opened the house up with windows and a skylight so that her work area would look out on the river.

  When we opened the front door, the house was cold and the air smelled of paint and turpentine and being closed up. There was a tarp thrown down in the centre of the room, and it was covered with containers of paint: tins, buckets, plastic ice-cream pails, jam jars. There were canvases stacked against a wall and a trestle table with brushes and boxes of pencils and rags and lengths of wood and steel that looked like rulers but were unmarked. In the corner farthest from the window were a hot plate, a couple of open suitcases and a sleeping bag.

  “La vie bohème,” I said.

  Sally looked around as if she were seeing the room for the first time. “I guess it is a little depressing,” she said, “but my living here is just temporary. Although,” she said gloomily, “with this fire, I’m probably going to be stuck here till fucking forever. You know, Jo, I don’t even know if womanswork was still mine last night. There was a possession date on the papers I signed, but who pays attention to stuff like that?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ll guarantee there’s a surgeon in town who’s paying a lot of attention to stuff like that at this very minute. A burned-out building isn’t much of a Christmas present. Anyway, I think the first order of business is to call your lawyer and your insurance agent.”

  The phone was in the corner by the sleeping bag. Sally dropped to her knees and swept aside a pile of clothes that covered her answering machine.

  “Jo, look at this. I was working last night and I always just turn off the phone and leave the machine on. I plugged the phone back in when I went to bed but I didn’t check my messages.” Over the red light signalling that there had been a call was a little window with digital numbers recording the number of messages received. The number in the window was sixty-two.

  “It must be a mistake,” I said.

  Sally hit the play button. “Let’s see,” she said.

  A computerized voice announced the date and time of the first message: December 23, 9:05 p.m. Then Stuart Lachlan’s voice, tight and strained, was telling Sally that Christmas dinner would be served at two o’clock, but if she wanted to come and see Taylor’s presents, she was welcome at one-thirty.

  “You’re a wild man, Stu,” said Sally, and she pushed herself up off the sleeping bag and walked across the room to the table where she’d thrown her coat. She picked up the porcelain doll and started checking solvents on her worktable. The computer voice announced call number two at 9:30 P.M. With a start, I recogn
ized Izaak Levin’s voice, but there was none of that easy charm I’d heard an hour before. He was telling Sally he had to talk to her immediately. His voice sounded urgent. Five minutes later, when he called back with the same message, he sounded menacing. The fourth call came at 10:03. It was Clea Poole; her voice was husky, heavy with emotion, again apologizing – she tried to laugh at that word – for the scene at Maggie’s. But she immediately began to replay the scene, and she was cut off in mid-sentence when the time for her message ran out. She called again, within seconds, picking up where she had left off. Throughout the night, her litany of betrayal and longing had continued. In all, there were fifty-nine calls from Clea. Sometimes the interval between calls was half an hour; sometimes there were three or four calls in a row. At the end, her voice, dead from pain and exhaustion, was as void of emotion as the mechanical computer voice that announced the time of her calls.

  All the while Clea talked, Sally worked on the doll, cleaning its face and body, dabbing at its burned frizz of hair with some kind of cream and then taking a scarf that she had obviously brought back from Santa Fe and cutting it into a sarong and turban. When the machine clicked, signalling there were no more messages, Sally turned toward me and held up the porcelain doll. With her frizz of hair shining from the cream and her Carmen Miranda outfit, she looked sensational.

  “What do you think?” Sally asked.

  “I think you saved the doll. Saving Clea Poole is going to be harder. Sally, she needs help, and so do you. I think you should take that tape to the police.”

  Sally shook her head impatiently. “I can’t do it, Jo.”

  “For God’s sake, why not? I wouldn’t be surprised if Clea set the fire herself. She’s clearly over the edge.”

  “Who pushed her?” asked Sally. “Damn, I don’t even know what made me sell womanswork. I don’t need the money. It was just some symbolic thing – good-bye to all that. Case closed. Now Clea’s frying her brain about it.”