Murder at the Mendel

by Gail Bowen

  There was a little stand of bushes beside the door, and the snow had drifted deeply in front of it. When I climbed through the snowdrift, my foot caught on something and I fell face down in the snow. But not wholly in the snow. My legs were on top of something. When I reached my right arm out to see what it was, I touched the silky smoothness of a down-filled coat. It felt like the padding in a coffin. I moved my hand up, and under the snow my fingers touched the contours of a human face. When I sat up, I could see the orange glare of the security lights reflected in his eyes.

  I had never seen him up close, but I would have known his face anywhere.

  It was the Righteous Protester.

  Suddenly I began to shake. I pushed myself up and ran toward the door. I pounded it, shouting for help, screaming for Sally. Desperate, I tried the knob. The door opened easily, and in a minute, I stepped from the cold into the hot craziness of a nightmare.

  There was a smell in the room. Something familiar, the smell of meat cooking. It took my eyes a few moments to adjust themselves to the half light and then to take in the scene.

  Clea had made real progress on the installation since morning. The scalpel junkie had had her last surgery and was suspended from the ceiling on wires, like a marionette. Beneath her was the bridal bed. There weren’t any blue sparks coming off the wires. Someone had turned off the power. But there was a figure on the bed. Clea Poole was lying face down on the barbed wire. She was naked. When I saw her, I knew where the meat smell was coming from. The hooks from the barbed wire must have embedded themselves in her skin; until the power had been turned off, Clea had been slowly cooking. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see any more. The room swayed around me. In a minute I felt an arm around my shoulders, and I heard a familiar voice, choked but recognizable.

  “I knew you’d come,” Sally said. Those were the only words she had time for. Suddenly we weren’t alone any more. Two policemen had come over: a young man who looked the way Burt Reynolds must have looked when he was twenty, and a heavier man. They seemed to have just arrived; their cheeks were still pink with cold. They were both very young, and despite their uniforms and their heavy regulation winter boots, it soon became apparent that nothing in the police college had prepared them for this.

  The Burt Reynolds officer looked up at the scalpel junkie and said in a tone of awe, “Jesus Christ, it must have been some sort of cult thing – a ritual murder or something.” His partner didn’t reply. He had taken one look at Clea and bent double with the dry heaves.

  “There’s another man outside in the snow,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize.

  The heavy cop straightened up, squared his shoulders and walked to the exit door. “I’ll check it out,” he said, and I thought how grateful he would be to fill his lungs with cold fresh air and have a chance to redeem himself.

  The Burt Reynolds officer turned to us and said in carefully measured tones, “I think the inspector is going to be pretty interested in talking to you.”

  Sally watched him walk across the room.

  “You know, I’ve never had a cop,” she said.

  “You’ll have the whole Saskatoon force to choose from before this is over,” I said, and I looked around that scene from hell and thought I had never said a stupider thing in my life.

  In fairness, there didn’t seem to be much to say. Sally and I lapsed into silence until Inspector Mary Ross McCourt came over and introduced herself. She didn’t look like a cop. She was about average height, not good looking, but carefully groomed. Her hair was bleached an improbable white blond, and her makeup was dramatic, red 1940s lipstick, scarlet fingernails, but her eyes behind the bright blue eye shadow were intelligent and knowing. I had the sense, as my grandmother used to say, that not much got by her.

  Inspector McCourt quickly established two things: in response to my question, she said that, yes, she was the niece of my old friend Hilda. But it was clear from her manner that I was not to presume that friendship with her aunt put us on social terms.

  The Burt Reynolds constable brought her a chair, but Mary Ross McCourt did not sit down. She stood with her hands resting on the chair back and looked at Sally and me. Psychological advantage to the inspector.

  “Under normal circumstances,” she said, “we’d go downtown, but those streets are lethal. It would be unconscionable to ask you to drive on them.” She looked hard at Sally and me. “I’m sure you agree that there’s been enough death for one night.”

  Sally and I exchanged glances: two schoolgirls in the principal’s office struggling with the etiquette of whether to answer a rhetorical statement. We didn’t say anything. But we didn’t stay silent. I had a question of my own, and it wasn’t rhetorical.

  “How did she die?” I asked.

  Mary Ross McCourt sighed. “The pathologist’s initial judgement is a bullet through the heart. About here,” she said, tapping the centre of her own chest with a scarlet-tipped finger. “Now, Ms. Love, I wonder if you’d be kind enough to move out of earshot while I talk to Mrs. Kilbourn.”

  Sally picked up her chair and carried it over to the area behind the scalpel junkie. Inspector McCourt moved her chair a little closer to mine but she still didn’t sit down. Up close, her hair was as blond and fluffy as Barbie’s, but she didn’t sound like a Barbie.

  “Mrs. Kilbourn,” she said, “I want you to tell me about your life in the last few hours. Don’t edit. Everything is significant.”

  I couldn’t seem to stop talking – shock, I guess, or aftershock. Mary Ross McCourt listened impassively, like a psychoanalyst in the movies. All the while I rattled on about preparing and eating the dinner with my children and driving through the blizzard, the crime site experts moved purposefully around us dusting surfaces for fingerprints; taking photographs; putting evidence in what looked like heavy plastic freezer bags; drawing floor plans. Across the room, prim as a schoolgirl, Sally sat in the shadow of the scalpel junkie. The scene was as surreal as a Salvador Dali landscape.

  When I finished, the inspector thanked me and suggested I stay in touch with the police. Then her professionalism broke. She took a step closer to me. Suddenly the eyes behind the bright blue shadow were glacial, and her voice was low with fury.

  “This is a terrible, terrible crime,” she said. “Whoever did this will never know another peaceful moment this side of the grave.” For the first time that night, Mary Ross McCourt reminded me of her aunt.

  The inspector took her chair over to where Sally was sitting, and I was interested to see that she established the same relationship with Sally as she had had with me: questioner standing, witness sitting. Then they brought in the Righteous Protester and some new cops came to take Clea’s body and I lost interest in police procedures.

  I followed along as they carried the bodies toward the front door. At first, the scene outside seemed like an instant replay of the night Erotobiography opened. The blizzard had stopped, and some hardy souls had braved the snow to come and gawk. The media people were there, too, adjusting equipment, waiting. But there were differences. This time the centre of attention wasn’t Sally Love; it was the two blanket-covered shapes on the stretchers being loaded into twin ambulances. And this time the target of the crowd’s moral outrage wasn’t art but murder.

  I was standing in the foyer, watching the ambulances pull away, when Sally came up beside me. She couldn’t have been with Mary Ross McCourt ten minutes.

  I was surprised. “You certainly got off lightly,” I said.

  Sally shrugged. “I didn’t have much to say. Jo, I haven’t got an alibi. I was working all day in the studio. I didn’t go out. I didn’t see anybody until I ran into one of the merry pranksters in my driveway after Clea called. He was hunkered down behind the Porsche – probably giving me a flat tire.”

  “In the middle of a blizzard?” I asked.

  “Jo, these guys are on a holy mission. Snow doesn’t mean diddly to them.”

  “I hope you told Inspector McCourt,” I said.
“Sal, that could be important. Did you notice anything about him that could help the police find him?”

  “Sure,” she said, “he hates art, he hates me, and he was wearing a ski mask. That should narrow it down for them. But I got my revenge. I stole his tuque.”

  “What did Inspector McCourt say?” I asked.

  “About the hat?”

  “No, about the whole thing?”

  Sally shrugged. “What could she say? She did her best Katharine Hepburn imitation of the public official who means business, then she just gave up – probably told me what she told you: ‘Don’t leave town. Keep in touch.’ Now come on. Let’s get out of here. My bravado is failing fast.”

  “We still have the rest of that bottle of Jack Daniel’s at my house,” I said. “Bourbon’s good for bravado – actually I could use a little bravado myself. Let’s go.”

  My kids greeted us at the door, white-faced and concerned. The local TV station had interrupted the Rose Bowl festivities to show the bodies of Clea Poole and the Righteous Protester being loaded into ambulances, and there had been a shot of Sally and me running for her car. Pete helped us off with our coats, and Greg, without being asked, brought us each a stiff drink. I was liking him better by the moment. I gave the kids an abbreviated account of what we knew, assured them that we were okay and told them they could get back to what they had been doing. Sally and I needed to talk.

  We took our drinks downstairs to the family room. There was a fire, and Sally sprawled on a rocker near the fireplace. I curled up on the couch in front of it.

  “I can’t get warm,” Sally said.

  “Here,” I said, handing her an afghan. “Mieka made this for me the year she broke her leg skiing.”

  Sally wrapped it around her shoulders. “I wonder if Taylor will ever want to make an afghan for her notorious mother.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Notorious mothers are the best kind.”

  Sally smiled and lifted her glass. “To mothers,” she said. Then her smile faded. “And to Clea Poole, may she rest in peace.”

  We drank, and Sally said thoughtfully, “You know, Jo, I’m glad she’s dead. She was my – what was that bird the old sailor had hung around his neck in the poem?”

  “An albatross,” I said.

  “Right. Clea was my albatross. She wanted me to carry her around forever. She would have done anything for me; you know, she did some terrible things. She had no morality when it came to me.”

  Instinctively, I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had heard her. “Sally, you can say that to me, but I’d be careful not to say it to anyone else. Clea didn’t put a bullet through her own heart and throw herself down on that bed because she was in a snit. Somebody murdered her, and until the police find out who did, you’re going to have to watch what you say.”

  The fire was dying down, and I got up and put on another log. Behind me, Sally said, “I wonder who they think killed her? The nakedness makes it look like some kind of sex thing.”

  I shuddered. “You mean fun and games that got out of hand?” I asked. “Is that a possibility? You’ve known her all these years. Were there other connections, another relationship that might have gone sour?”

  “All her relationships turned sour,” Sally said flatly. “This city is filled with her failed relationships. Those baby cops we saw tonight are going to learn a lot about life before they’re through with Clea.” She stood up and stretched her arms above her head. “I’ve got to make tracks, Jo. That car of mine is fairly noticeable, and it’s only a matter of time before the media people start beating down your door.”

  “Sal, stay here. The roads are terrible. I can open out this couch for you.”

  “No,” Sally said. “The best thing for me right now is work. Take my mind off things. I’m going to go to the studio, take a bath, crack open my Christmas Courvoisier and make some art.”

  I walked her upstairs and stood in the entrance hall as she put on her boots and parka. At the door, she turned and hugged me.

  “Thanks for everything. I’m not sure I could have made it if you hadn’t been there.” She smiled. “People can always count on Jo, can’t they?” she said, and then she walked down our front path and vanished into the night.

  I woke up early the next morning, anxious and restless. When I went down to make coffee, the sky was beginning to lighten, and I looked out on a white world. New snow was everywhere. The tracks I had made New Year’s Eve when I’d gone to the bottom of the garden and found Clea waiting were gone. Clea’s tracks would be gone, too – all her tracks, everywhere, filled in with snow as if she had never been.

  I went out and picked up the morning paper from my mailbox. The double homicide had beaten out the blizzard in the headlines. Pictures of Clea and the Righteous Protester were on the front page. She was graduating from university, and he was standing in front of the Mendel with his placard and his Bible. I threw the paper unread on the breakfast table, went upstairs, showered and dressed. I still felt lousy, so I came downstairs, picked up the keys to the Volvo and headed out, figuring that maybe a drive would help.

  Inevitably, I guess, I was drawn to the gallery. In the first light of morning, it looked quite festive. The bright yellow of the banners with Sally’s name was matched by the bright yellow crime scene tape; there were police around the front entrance, and on the lawn, police dogs were pawing at the snow. Other people had decided to take in the murder scene, too, and traffic was slow. I was inching along when I looked across the road and saw Stuart Lachlan out on his front lawn. His house was close enough that I had a clear view of what he was doing. Bundled against the cold, he was repairing one of Taylor’s snow people. Someone had knocked off an arm and caved in its side. Stu was methodically repairing the damage. In the doorway, I could see Nina’s neat figure, watching.

  I drove past the gallery and made a U turn. I pulled over to the curb in front of number seventeen and rolled down my window. Stuart came over immediately and leaned in. When she saw me, Nina ran out, too, and stood shivering behind him. She was immaculate as always but she looked tired and old, and I realized what a toll all this was taking on her.

  “I guess there’s no point asking if you heard about Clea,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep, either. But I didn’t think of making a snowman as therapy.”

  Stu looked at me gravely. “It’s not therapy, Jo. It was vandalism. I didn’t want Taylor to wake up and see her snow lady wrecked. Nina was out here trying to repair it first, but … there are things a man has to do.”

  I looked to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. “You’re a good father, Stu,” I said, and meant it. “Anyway, I’m glad to see you’re up and about. You’re both okay, aren’t you?”

  Stu shook his head and laughed humourlessly. “Couldn’t be better. Have you read your morning paper? The media are making certain connections between the murders and Erotobiography. Of course, Sally’s being discovered at the scene of the crime didn’t help matters. On the radio this morning there was a not exactly veiled suggestion that if I hadn’t been so anxious to push my wife’s pornography, two more people would be greeting the dawn today. And the gallery’s a disaster – police everywhere. Tracking dogs sniffing the galleries. Doors left open. Temperature control all shot to hell. I was over there this morning pleading with the police to let me move some paintings into the vault until they’re through.” He raked his hand through his thinning hair. “If I’d known there was going to be such chaos, I wouldn’t have …”

  “You wouldn’t have what, Stuart?” Nina’s voice sounded small and frightened.

  He gave her an odd look. “I wouldn’t have been so eager to accept Sally’s offer to donate Erotobiography to the Mendel. What did you think I was going to say, Nina?” There was an ugly edge to his voice. The spoor of murder and suspicion was already changing everything.

  “I don’t know,” she said vaguely, “something else.” And then she asked the painful question, the one we’d all backed away from.
r />   “Who do they think did it, Joanne? Is Sally a suspect?”

  “I don’t think they’ve gotten that far yet,” I said. “Listen, I didn’t tell you, but I was there at the gallery last night. I … I was the one who found the Righteous Protester.”

  I could hear Nina’s intake of breath. She looked quickly at Stu. In the hypercharged atmosphere of that morning, I could see the fear in her eyes.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s terrifying, all of it, but, Nina, they’ll find out who really committed the murders. The police inspector who interviewed us last night looked as if she could see through walls. When she gets this case put together, she’ll know Sally was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Thank God,” said Stu.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Thank God. Stu, you’d better get Nina back inside. It’s too cold to be out with just a sweater. I’ll talk to you later. Ni, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. It really is.”

  As I turned onto the University Bridge, I wondered if my assurances had sounded as hollow to Nina’s ears as they had to mine. I looked back at Stuart Lachlan’s house. Stu and Nina were standing on the front lawn watching me, and Taylor had come out and joined them. Behind them, in exactly the same grouping – Daddy on the left, Mummy on the right and the little girl safe between them – was Taylor’s family of snow people. As Angus would say, “Deadly.”

  I drove straight to my office at the university and worked for a couple of hours. I made up a syllabus for each of my classes, checked some handouts and read over my lecture notes for the first day – busywork to make me believe I was in charge of my world.

  It was a little after noon when I went home to the hollow feeling of an empty house. There was an empty ice-cream pail on the counter in the kitchen, and when I put it under the sink to keep kitchen scraps in, I noticed two burrito wrappings in the garbage. Wherever they were, Peter and Angus were well fed.

  I found their note on the kitchen table. They’d gone tobogganing at Cranberry Flats with some of Peter’s friends from the university. They’d be home for supper. I could imagine how pleased Pete would be to have Angus along. I made myself a sandwich, then I peeled a bag of onions and threw them in the processor to slice for onion soup. Homemade soup would taste pretty good after an afternoon tobogganing.