The Last Good Day

by Gail Bowen

  Lily raised her perfectly toned arm and pitched the gun along the shore behind me. When I heard it hit the ground, my pulse slowed.

  “I kept my part of the bargain,” Lily said. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “I’m still here,” I said. “Tell me about the Winners’ Circle. What did it mean to you?”

  “Everything,” she said and suddenly her face was washed of care. As she talked, Lily was in the past, discovering her identity, building her life. “The first time I heard the word ‘entitlement’ I thought of the way the partners were the afternoon I met them. It was at this drunken happy hour in the old Falconer Shreve offices. The place looked as if it had been strafed, but the five of them were perfect, so sure of themselves. They knew that they were the best and that they were entitled to the best.”

  “And that’s why you wanted to be part of their world.”

  “That’s why I deserved to be part of it,” Lily corrected. “I didn’t just marry into the Winners’ Circle. I earned my place. As much as any of them, I made Falconer Shreve a success. I knew if we wanted to get platinum-card clients we needed prestigious offices. I found that heritage building where we are now, and I made all the decisions about the renovations. I’ve hired every administrative assistant and sat in on the interviews for all the juniors we’ve hired. I know when someone is Falconer Shreve material. I’ve made sure the bills are paid and the clients are handled with care – we entertain the ones who matter twice a year, Christmas and Canada Day. That party you were at was my idea. It was my idea for us all to build summer houses out here. When Kevin’s parents were alive, we’d just camp on the beach, but I knew if we were going to be a top law firm, we had to have houses, big expensive houses that said Falconer Shreve was a presence in the community.

  “After we built the houses at Lawyers’ Bay, the people in town who had looked down their noses at me my whole life, who had called me names and treated me like dirt, like less than dirt, started treating me with respect. And I treated them with respect. There was nothing to be gained by holding a grudge. I had to make certain everything ran smoothly.”

  I met her gaze. “Rose said that from the time she taught you to knit, you never dropped a stitch.”

  Lily shook her head sadly. “I couldn’t afford to. I always knew that if I dropped a stitch everything would come undone.”

  “And Clare Mackey was going to take away everything you’d worked for.”

  Lily looked at me gratefully. “You do understand.”

  My jaw was swelling. It was difficult to get out the words. “What happened with Clare?”

  “She brought it on herself,” Lily said. “That business with the trust ledgers was old news. Every account had been balanced to the penny. Everyone in the firm took a lot of crap jobs to make sure we got back on top again.”

  “So the partners knew.”

  “About the trust accounts? No,” she said. “Chris was the only one who knew. I told the others we were in a slump because of the market. I said that, for a while, they’d have to take whatever cases came along, and they did.”

  “Without question?”

  “They trusted my judgement. If Clare had trusted my judgement things would have been different. I was the one she came to when she discovered the problem with the ledgers. I tried to convince her that since there were no victims, we could all just move along. I said that if she didn’t want to stay at Falconer Shreve, I’d make inquiries about other firms.”

  “But she didn’t agree to that.”

  “Oh but she did – at first.” Lily’s voice was thick with contempt. “And when she agreed, I arranged an interview with a really good law firm in Vancouver. Everything was taken care of. Then she missed her period, and things fell apart. I’d always gotten along well with Clare. She was like me – realistic, able to keep her focus – but the pregnancy threw her. It was almost as if she saw it as some sort of punishment. She arranged for the abortion. She didn’t tell Chris until it was over. He was devastated. Clare didn’t help matters there. She put the blame for the abortion squarely at his door, said that the poison of dishonesty seeps into everything and that if she was going to start a new life, she had to excise the poison by going to the Law Society. That’s when he came to me.

  “He was in terrible shape. He felt he was responsible for the death of his child and now he was going to bring shame to the firm. It was just before the Remembrance Day holiday, so I went to Clare and begged her to take the weekend to think about her decision. I said she could use our place out here. I was certain if she just had a chance to consider, she’d realize that there had been enough grief.”

  Lily’s eyes were beseeching. She was desperate to make me understand the forces that had driven her to kill Clare Mackey.

  “Clare wouldn’t listen to you,” I said.

  “No. When I came to pick her up on that Sunday night, she hadn’t changed her mind.” Lily laughed softly. “Did you know she couldn’t drive? Three university degrees and Clare Mackey couldn’t drive a car. If she had a driver’s licence she’d be alive today.” Lily shook her head. “But there’s no going back, is there?”

  “How did it happen?” I said.

  “I choked her to death with my bare hands,” Lily said. “We were standing on that spot where the gazebo is now, looking out at the lake. She just wouldn’t listen. No matter what I said, it was the same old tune – she had to get the poison of what Chris had done out of her life. No thought at all about how it would affect the rest of us. I was so angry. When it was over, I couldn’t believe what I’d done. Then, of course, I had to take care of the … aftermath … myself.”

  “Did you have to take care of Chris, too?”

  Lily’s smile was faint. “No. Chris took care of Chris. After he talked to you the night of the fireworks, he came to me. He said he was going to ‘atone.’ He’d already made some phone calls and he’d gotten up his nerve to call Clare.”

  “He believed the story about the ‘dream job’?”

  “No, he believed Falconer Shreve was paying Clare to stay away and stay silent. But all of a sudden he had to cleanse his conscience. He was as stubborn as Clare was. He was prepared to go to the ends of the earth to find her and ask her forgiveness, regardless of the consequences for the firm. So I told him what I’d done. I told him that I’d killed Clare to protect Falconer Shreve. I told him that all that time he’d been talking to you in the gazebo, he’d been standing on her burial ground. I thought that might shock him into understanding that his first loyalty should be to us, to the Winners’ Circle. But he said he had to go to the police.” Lily’s grey eyes met mine. “Do you know what he told me? He said he couldn’t live with the knowledge of what I’d done. So I said, ‘You don’t have to live with it.’ All I meant was that I was the one who had to live with what I’d done, but he heard it differently. He gave me a hug and said, ‘Point taken.’ The next thing I knew he’d driven his car into the lake.”

  “The ultimate act of loyalty,” I said.

  “Yes,” Lily said. “At the critical moment, Chris knew exactly what to do. Maybe that’s something members of the Winners’ Circle are born with, like their sense that they’re entitled to the best.” Her face crumpled. “I never quite managed to convince myself of that one.”

  I remembered Chris telling Taylor that nothing lasts forever. He’d been wrong. Childhood lasts forever.

  When I saw Alex’s Audi drive up, I felt a wash of relief. It was over. As Alex approached Lily, his voice was gentle and reassuring. “Time to go home, Lily,” he said.

  In an instant, the pain and confusion were wiped from her face. “You always find me.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I always do.”

  She shivered. “I’m cold.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “Better?” he asked.

  Silent, she nodded and drew closer to him. The moment triggered the memory of a night of changeable weather when a wind had come up, and Alex had put his arm around
me. Something inside me broke.

  For the first time Alex looked at me. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  My jaw was so sore I could barely speak. “Just remembering,” I said.

  Two words, but they were enough. “That night on the Albert Street bridge,” he said. “The beginning of the end.” I turned away because I couldn’t bear to look at his eyes. “It was probably for the best,” he said. “It would never have worked for us, Jo.”

  I waited till they’d driven off before I went to my car. When I called Zack on my cell, I was prepared to leave a message, but he answered.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey, this is a nice surprise,” he said.

  “I’m afraid it’s not,” I said. “Lily’s been arrested for Clare Mackey’s murder.”

  “Oh Jesus,” he said. “What happened?”

  “Zack, I’ve hurt my jaw. It’s hard for me to talk. But Lily will need a lawyer.”

  “What about you?”

  “No lawyer, just an ice pack,” I said.

  “I’m calling a doctor,” Zack said.

  “Don’t. Just make sure someone’s with Lily.”

  “Was Gracie there when Lily was arrested?”

  “No,” I said. “Rose took the kids over to Standing Buffalo for the day.”

  “Thank God for that,” Zack said. “Hang on, Ms. Kilbourn. I’m on my way.”

  When I got back to the cottage, I changed into dry clothes, lit a fire, and made myself a hot drink. Then I went over and picked up Louis L’Amour’s Buckskin Run. The book jacket told me there were over 110 million copies of his books in print around the world, and assured me I would be spellbound. I wasn’t, but it wasn’t Louis L’Amour’s fault.

  Rod Morgan and Jed Blue had just agreed to be partners because they were cut from the same leather, when the phone rang. It was Zack.

  “Something’s screwy, Joanne. I’m at police headquarters. They don’t know anything about an arrest – especially not one involving Alex Kequahtooway. He’s been suspended from the force.”

  “But Lily confessed to everything. They left together. I assumed …”

  Zack sighed. “Never assume. Don’t talk to anybody until I get there, okay? There are a hundred cops looking for Lily and the inspector, and they’re sending someone to Lawyers’ Bay to talk to you. I’ll be there as soon as I get some ice for your jaw.”

  “If you brought some single-malt Scotch to go with that ice, I wouldn’t take it amiss,” I said.

  I hung up the phone furious at Alex for deceiving me once again, and at myself for being stupid enough to believe that he had suddenly remembered the oath he’d taken when he’d graduated from the police college. He and Lily were clearly on the run. Like everything else, that decision made no sense. Alex knew me well enough to know I would follow up on what happened after Lily was taken to the police station. And he knew that the moment the police realized he and Lily had fled, they would deploy every available officer to track them down. There was no way they could escape. Then, like Paul on the road to Damascus, the scales fell from my eyes, and I knew.

  It was a short drive to the church at Lebret. Not more than fifteen minutes, and for the first time that day, the skies had cleared. The silver Audi was parked behind the church, facing the Stations of the Cross on the hill that Lily’s mother had climbed every day during the last year of her life. My legs were weak as I picked my way through the puddles towards Alex’s car. Bathed in the watery sunlight, the vehicle already seemed unearthly.

  I think I had realized all along that I would be too late. If I hadn’t known the truth, I would have mistaken Lily and Alex for lovers. Her head was against his chest; his arm was around her shoulders, shielding and protecting. Later, forensic testing would determine that Alex had fired both shots. There was no way out for either of them and they hadn’t wanted to take a chance that one would live without the other. But at that moment, all I could see was the blood that flowed from their wounds, mingling and mixing like tributaries of a larger river, two lives that had run their parallel courses and come together in death. At long last, Alex Kequahtooway and Lily Ryder were home.

  There are few sites that have the emotional resonance of a fresh grave in summer: the moist dank scent of earth and the too-sweet smell of cut flowers curling with heat and the onset of decay. The week after the tragedy at Lebret, I was present as two people were put in their graves and a third was removed from hers.

  Lily and Alex were buried in Lake View cemetery across the water from Lawyers’ Bay. In an act of generosity that made it possible to believe in human decency, Blake Falconer arranged to have the woman he had always loved buried next to the only human being she had ever cared for. Both Lily’s funeral and Alex’s were private. Both were marked by the bruised bewilderment of mourners forced to deal with the fact that a human being’s final act had been to throw a grenade into the careful construction that housed everything that those who loved them believed them to be.

  From the moment Eli Kequahtooway arrived back from Vancouver, where he was studying art at Emily Carr, Angus was at his side. There had been a time when the boys had been like brothers, and I was glad to see that the bond between them was still strong. Eli had chosen to stay at Standing Buffalo until his uncle’s funeral, and Angus had, without comment, simply moved in with him. They bunked together at Betty’s house, and the night before the funeral, Betty made tea and fried bannock for the boys and me and then withdrew to her pretty, frilly bedroom so Angus, Eli, and I could talk.

  We sat at Betty’s kitchen table until the small hours. Eli was haunted by the fact that there had been no suicide note, no final telephone call, and that night, in an attempt to explain the unexplainable, the three of us tried to piece together what we knew. It wasn’t enough. As I watched the hope in Eli’s eyes turn to despair, I knew that it would be years before he would trust again. When finally we said goodnight, I drew Eli to me and whispered that his uncle had loved him deeply, but that events had overtaken him and he simply hadn’t had time to say goodbye. The words were cold comfort, but they were all I had.

  Clare Mackey’s funeral was the same day as Alex Kequahtooway’s. Had there been no conflict, I might have gone. Then again, I might not have. I’d said my prayers the day the machines ripped up the hill where Clare was buried. The workers had been careful as they disassembled the gazebo. One of the men assured me that not a pane of glass was cracked. The wooden carving of Gloria Ryder had been placed to one side. It lay on the beach, its back to the gazebo as the police dug up Clare Mackey’s remains.

  Sandra Mikalonis sent me a copy of the eulogy she had delivered at Clare’s funeral. In it she praised Clare’s integrity and remembered her passion for Bach and her joy when she scored the winning goal at the national law games in her graduating year. Sandra ended her eulogy by noting Clare’s steadfast dedication to her principles. Clare’s life, Sandra said, had been fired by her commitment to the motto of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law: Fiat justitia – let justice be done.

  A week after the funerals, Rose and I visited the Lake View cemetery. We came with flowers, jam jars full of petunias from Betty’s garden. Lily’s were pink; Alex’s purple. “Better for a man,” Betty had declared.

  As we always seemed to be, Rose and I were in step. We were silent as we placed our flowers on the graves and unhurried as we thought our private thoughts. It was a gentle day, cool, sunny, and breezy.

  “So how are you doing?” Rose asked finally.

  “Truthfully, I feel as if someone ripped away my top layer of skin.”

  Rose nodded sagely. “I know that feeling. But we have to stop. The old people say if you mourn too long they get stuck, the ones who’ve passed away. They can’t get on with their journey.”

  “I’ve heard that,” I said. “I always thought it made a lot of sense.”

  “And you and I have to get on with it, too. We’re not young women.”

  “No,” I said. “We’re no
t.”

  “And we’ve got responsibilities,” Rose said. “I’ve got Gracie and her dad.”

  “And I’ve got my kids and my job. Did I tell you my daughter and her family are spending the month of August here?”

  “Is that the daughter I met at Alex’s funeral?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My daughter Mieka.”

  “How old are the kids?”

  “Maddy’s three and Lena’s seven months.”

  “That’s good,” Rose said. “We could use some babies around here.”

  I stopped to pick a weed from a grave. Rose took the Safeway bag from her pocket and held it out to me. I dropped the weed in and she nodded approvingly.

  “That Zack Shreve’s an interesting man,” she said.

  “He is,” I agreed.

  “Tough.”

  “So they say.”

  Rose raised an eyebrow. “They also say that sometimes the toughest nuts have the sweetest meat. I wonder if that’s true.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Rose shoved the Safeway bag back in her pocket. “Well,” she said, “isn’t it lucky that you’ve got the rest of the summer to find out?”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Jan Seibel, B.F.A., LL.B., a great artist, a fine lawyer, and an incredibly patient and generous teacher; to Joan Baldwin, who continues to care for our family with consummate skill; and, as always, to my husband, Ted, for making everything possible.

  If you enjoyed

  THE LAST

  GOOD DAY

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  GAIL BOWEN’s first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award. It was followed by Murder at the Mendel (1991), The Wandering Soul Murders (1992), A Colder Kind of Death (1994) (which won an Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel), A Killing Spring (1996), Verdict in Blood (1998), Burying Ariel (2000), The Glass Coffin (2002), The Last Good Day (2004), The Endless Knot (2006), The Brutal Heart (2008), and The Nesting Dolls (2010). In 2008 Reader’s Digest named Bowen Canada’s Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009 she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Bowen has also written plays that have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. Now retired from teaching at First Nations University of Canada, Gail Bowen lives in Regina. Please visit the author at www.gailbowen.com.