by Gail Bowen
Jill whistled. “And how do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I took my book of essays up to the roof garden, pulled a chair close to an arbour of lemon-coloured roses, and read M.F.K. Fisher until my eyes grew heavy. The shrill of my cell awakened me. It was Zack. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m in the roof garden, getting a sunburn, breathing in the scent of roses, and reading about food.”
“Sounds better than my afternoon,” he said.
“The meeting didn’t go well?”
“Margot came out on top, but the members of the board didn’t make it easy for her,” Zack said. “This has been one hell of a day.”
“The evening will be better,” I said. “Ed’s bringing lamb biryani.”
Zack brightened. “Margot wanted to know if she could bring Laurie’s husband, Steve, to dinner tonight?”
“Of course. Ed is a generous cook.”
“I’ll pass that along,” Zack said.
“Good,” I said. “Zack, do you have a second?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Debbie Haczkewicz called just after you left for the meeting with the board. I didn’t suggest she call you then. I figured whatever news she had would wait, and you and Margot and Declan had enough on your mind.”
“True enough. So what was the news?”
“Leland’s body will be released this weekend.”
“Well, I guess that’s good. Anything else?”
“Yes. Riel finished building the ice-cream stand. Taylor’s over there now, putting on the finishing touches. And Riel and Mieka are now living together.”
“Whoa! So a martini night.”
“You bet,” I said. “A night for doubles if ever there was one.”
Zack, Margot, and Declan were back at Halifax Street before five. Margot went to her condo to call Norine about getting the funeral details settled, and Declan volunteered to pick up Taylor at Mieka’s, leaving Zack and me with some welcome time alone.
After Zack made our drinks, we took them out to the terrace. There was enough breeze to ripple the leaves on the nearby ficus. We positioned ourselves so we faced the late-afternoon sun. Zack leaned back and inhaled deeply. “We have to build more time for this into our day,” he said.
“Agreed,” I said. “But I guess for a while, you’re going to be spending a lot of time on Peyben business.”
“Looks that way,” Zack said.
“What’s going to happen there?” I said.
“Nobody knows for sure. But I can make some educated guesses. I think Margot will ask Blake to take over as CEO until a new CEO is chosen. That’s not what the board had in mind but a lot happened today that they didn’t have in mind.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that Margot was sufficiently in command to recognize what they were up to. The gentlemen of the board underestimated her. Margot’s a helluva lawyer, but of course those bozos never took the time to check out her track record. They were condescending and smug, and they thought they could snow her with statistics and business jargon. She let them roll for a while and then she restated what they’d said – except she hosed the bullshit off the orotund phrases. That’s when the board members knew she was on to them and started scrambling to take control of the situation.”
“That must have been entertaining,” I said.
Zack brightened at the memory. “It was a sweet moment, and Margot seized it. While the board was figuring out how to regroup, Margot gathered up her papers and told the board they were done for the day. She said the purpose of the meeting had been to take one another’s measure and they’d done that. She also said that anyone who wasn’t happy with the direction the company was taking should resign immediately. Then she gave them her barracuda smile and said, “Same time, same place, tomorrow?”
“I wish I could have been there.”
“I do, too. Margot really was magnificent.”
“How did Declan do?”
“He played it smart, too – shook hands, made eye contact, took it all in, and never left Margot’s side.”
“Declan’s really coming into his own with this, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s the one who suggested that he and Margot and Blake and I meet tomorrow before we face the Peyben board again.”
“Leland would be proud.”
“Yeah.” Zack’s voice was hoarse with emotion. He cleared his throat. “I should probably call Norine and Debbie. Catch up on the latest.”
“I’ll go in and make the salad,” I said. I picked up our glasses and leaned over and kissed Zack’s forehead. “This was nice,” I said.
“Nothing like a time-out,” Zack said. And then he hit speed-dial.
Zack’s conversations were lengthy. When he finally came inside, he wheeled over to the salad bowl and picked out a cherry tomato.”
“Anything new?” I said.
“Nothing at the office that can’t wait. But Debbie did say there’s a rumour going around North Central that a member of Red Rage was paid to kill Leland. It’s all she has, so she’s hauling in the bad boys one by one, but she’s not optimistic. Gang members have a tendency to protect one another. Besides, the shooter has probably vamoosed by now – he could be anywhere.” Zack turned his chair towards the hall. “Now I’m going to get out of this coat and tie.”
All at once, the image of Louise Hunter, shaky and miserable, flashed through my mind.
“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Zack, the night of the All-College, Louise told me it would be easier for her if Leland was dead – that way she wouldn’t have to imagine his life with Margot. At the time, I just thought it was alcoholic self-pity, but now …”
Zack winced. “We’re going to have to tell Debbie this.”
“There’s more,” I said. “When Margot and I talked just after she found out that Leland had died, she told me that he’d had death threats – one from Louise, the night before the wedding.”
Zack picked up his BlackBerry. “You can’t sit on information like this, Joanne.” He hit speed-dial and handed the phone to me.
I could tell Debbie Haczkewicz was taking notes as I told her about my conversation with Louise, and about Louise’s threats to Leland. When I was through, she said, “I appreciate this, Joanne. I know you’ve been through a lot lately.”
“Others are going through worse,” I said.
I handed Zack back his BlackBerry. He’d been watching my face closely. “You do realize you didn’t have an option,” he said. “You had to tell Debbie.”
“I know, but I feel as if I betrayed Louise. That night at Luther, the other parents were congratulating Margot on her marriage and admiring her ring. Everything Louise wanted was slipping away. She was desperate, and desperate people sometimes say terrible things.”
“And sometimes they do terrible things, Joanne. You told the truth. Leland deserves that. If Louise had no connection with Leland’s death, she’ll have the unpleasant experience of being questioned by the police, but after they check out her story, she’ll be fine.”
“And if she did hire someone to kill Leland?”
“Then she’s in big trouble, and she deserves to be. The Latin motto on my law degree is clear on that point. Fiat justitia. Let justice be done.”
There was a knock on our door, and I shrank. “When do we tell Margot and Declan?”
Zack squeezed my hand. “In an ideal world, we could wait till morning.”
“This isn’t an ideal world,” I said. “But we can at least wait until after dessert.”
It turned out to be a good evening. As Zack poured the wine and we gathered at the dinner table to share Ed’s savoury lamb biryani, there was a feeling of family. To one degree or another, we were all mourning something we had lost and would never recover, and that loss united us. The mood of the evening wasn’t dark. Most of the conversation was easy and aimless. Only once did the grief break through. When Steve h
anded around his camera with the seeming endless series of pictures he’d taken of Hunter that day, Zack ribbed him gently about being a proud papa. Margot said, “Leland would have been worse,” then she dissolved in tears. Steve was sitting next to her, and when he put his arm around her, Margot buried her face in his chest. “That’s good, Margie,” he whispered. “Let it out.”
After we’d had dessert, Zack’s gaze travelled around the table. “We’ve been putting this off, but it’s time for an update. Debbie Haczkewicz says word on the street is that someone with serious money hired a member of Red Rage to kill Leland.”
Declan broke the silence. “Why would anyone do that?” he said, and his voice cracked.
Zack’s eyes sought mine. “Too soon to know,” Zack said. “Declan, it’s too soon to know if the rumour is even true. Debbie’s checking it out, and she’s talking to everyone who might have had a motive. Declan, I’m afraid that includes your mother.”
Taylor moved closer to Declan and threaded her arm through his. He shot her a grateful look and breathed deeply. “Yeah. I can see why,” he said, and his acceptance of the unthinkable tore at my heart.
Margot’s face was a mask. “Anything else?”
“Nothing definite,” Zack said. “But it’s early times.”
“I’m glad you waited till we were through eating to spring this on us,” Margot said dryly.
“Timing is everything,” Zack said. Suddenly, his composure broke. “Jesus, Margot, I wish this wasn’t happening.”
“Me, too,” she said.
Steve stood up. “I’m going to exercise my authority as brother-in-law and take Margot home. She’s had enough for one day.” He turned to Declan. “I think you have, too.”
As we said our goodbyes at the door, Taylor hugged Declan for a long time, and when he turned to go, she went straight upstairs to her room with a quiet “Goodnight.”
I’d just started emptying the dishwasher when I heard Zack’s cell ring in the living room. It was a long conversation. By the time he joined me in the kitchen, I’d finished setting the table for breakfast. Without asking, Zack poured us each some cognac. I watched his face as he handed one of snifters to me.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“The worst,” Zack said. “That was Debbie. Sage Mackenzie just left police headquarters. The cops are on their way to talk to Louise.”
“Sage has evidence that Louise was involved in Leland’s murder?”
“Nothing concrete, but enough circumstantial evidence to raise questions. Sage still has friends on the force, so she’s been following the Hunter case. Today she found out that the cops were investigating the possibility that someone in Red Rage had been paid to kill Leland, and apparently that triggered a memory.
“On Canada Day, Louise passed out after dinner and when Sage was getting her ready for bed, she saw a stack of cash in Louise’s lingerie drawer. Louise has a thing about credit cards. I remember cautioning her about keeping large amount of cash in the house, but she never listened. Anyway, after Louise was asleep, Sage counted the money. There was $15,000 in the drawer.”
“Wow.”
“Wow, indeed,” Zack said. “$15,000 is a substantial stash for incidentals, but Sage didn’t say anything because as far as she was concerned there was no reason to. It was Louise’s money, and she could do what she wanted with it.
“But today when Sage heard about the possibility that Leland’s death was a paid hit by Red Rage, she was concerned enough to check out the lingerie drawer. The money was gone. When Sage asked Louise about it, Louise was defensive and hostile.”
“So Sage went to the police.”
“Not immediately. She apparently has real affection for Louise, so she struggled with her decision. Finally, Sage decided to be guided by her conscience. As a lawyer, she’s an officer of the court. She has an ethical duty to tell the truth.”
“So it’s only a matter of time before they arrest Louise?”
“Sage thinks so. She’s already called Sandra Mikalonis to represent Louise.”
“This is so terrible,” I said. “Are you going to tell Margot tonight?”
“No,” Zack said. “Let her get some sleep. This is going to crush Declan, but maybe if I have a night to think about it, I’ll come up with a way to cushion the blow.”
“You’re taking on too much,” I said. “I love you, Zack. Last Christmas I was afraid I was going to lose you. I don’t want that to happen again.”
Zack swirled his cognac. “Neither do I, but what’s that old saying about how we don’t know how strong we are until being strong is the only option? We do what we have to do.”
CHAPTER
19
The next morning as Zack dressed for the meeting with the Peyben board, he was sanguine. He and Sandra Mikalonis had talked earlier. The police had cautioned Louise to remain in the city, but they hadn’t arrested her, so Zack had been able to present Margot and Declan with a best-case scenario. Margot was a shrewd enough lawyer to know that every best-case scenario has a flip side, but she hadn’t pushed it.
When Zack left to pick up Margot and Declan, I walked across the hall with him so I could wish them luck. Zack felt they were on solid ground with the board. The initial meeting had been a feeling-out process. Now that everyone knew where they stood, Zack was optimistic that the board would support Margot and they could all get on with the business of running the company.
In less than an hour, Zack, Margot, and Declan were back in our condo and they were clearly gobsmacked.
“That was quick,” I said.
Declan ran his hand through his dreads. “I’m still not quite sure what happened.”
Zack shrugged. “Your stepmother showed that she has the makings of a first-rate poker player.”
“Is anyone going to fill me in?” I said.
“Sure,” Zack said. “The story is short and sweet. We walked into the boardroom at Falconer Shreve. The members of the Peyben board were sitting around the table looking as if they owned the place. Their chair stood up and announced that he was prepared to take on the role of CEO of Peyben and if Margot didn’t agree to his appointment, the board would resign en masse. Margot didn’t blink.”
I turned to her. “So what did you do?”
“I said, ‘Resignations accepted all around,’ and then I said, ‘Peyben thanks you for your service. Now get out.’ ”
“And they did?”
“Oh yeah,” Zack said. “They got out, and when they left, smoke was coming out of their ears.”
I laughed. “So you’ll be looking for new board members.”
“Blake’s already drawing up a list of prospects,” Margot said. “I actually feel pretty good about this.”
“So do I,” Declan said. “Those guys creeped me out.”
Later that day, I drove to a shop that specialized in custom-printing T-shirts. I ordered three: one each for Zack, Margot, and Declan. On the front of each shirt were the words Being Strong is the Only Option.
Margot and Declan wore their shirts till the day of Leland’s funeral.
Knowing that Leland’s funeral would be emotionally gruelling, Zack, Taylor, and I planned a morning that would keep our family near Margot if she needed us but would give us a chance to recharge. The three of us had a long swim, then Taylor went to work in her studio, and Zack and I took tea and an armload of our condo’s never-ending supply of magazines up to the roof garden, kicked back, and waited for sunshine and peace to work their magic.
As a rule, Zack did not handle leisure well. After five minutes exclaiming over the joy of doing nothing, he always found something to do. That morning, as he flipped through Sports Illustrated, reading aloud items he was certain would be of interest to me, I found myself taking a hard look at my dream of getting Zack to retire early. He had just finished giving me a précis of the high school careers of the some of the most promising new U.S. college quarterbacks when he took out his BlackBerry and began returning calls. I did n
ot discourage him.
For an hour Zack contentedly thumbed responses and chatted away while I read New Yorker articles on how the dog became our master and how Thomas Hardy’s reputation as God’s undertaker still made him the most relevant of early twentieth-century authors.
By the time Zack had finished his calls, and I’d ordered the e-book of Jude the Obscure, we were hot and hungry. As we stepped out of the elevator, my phone rang, and Zack mouthed that he was going to check on Margot and Declan.
It was Norine. She must have been swamped with details about the funeral, but as always, she sounded in command. “Everything appears to be under control. Of course, appearance isn’t reality.”
I laughed. “Actually, with you, it generally is. Anyway, let me know if you need a hand.”
“I will. But that isn’t why I called. Joanne, I’ve been delving into the history of that strange file of clippings about your late husband’s life. Patrick Hawley, the young man who found it, says there’s a companion file. I told him to courier it directly to you from the Calgary office.”
“Did Patrick say what was in the file?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. But given everything that’s happened, I think you should take it to the police.”
“Given everything that’s happened,” I said, “I think you’re right.”
At Margot’s request, we dressed for the funeral as we would for a summer gathering. As we turned onto the university campus, I knew that in suggesting comfortable clothing in light fabrics and pastels, Margot had chosen wisely. Those coming together to honour Leland would be dressed to remember, not mourn.
In midsummer, a university campus can be Arcadia. The lawns are lush, the trees are in full leaf, the flowerbeds are brilliant, and the tanned, leggy students, their lives bursting into bloom in the summer heat, are more handsome then they will ever be again. Sublime. But on that hot July day, we were on campus for the funeral of a good man, and the beauty of our surroundings bruised my heart.
Zack and Taylor and I were early for the service. The partners at Falconer Shreve had decided to accompany Margot and Declan as they walked up the aisle to take their seats. A young woman from the funeral home asked us to sign the guestbook, and after we had signed, she directed us to the room where Margot, Declan, and the partners would assemble. I wanted to be alone for a while, so I told Zack and Taylor to go ahead without me and I’d meet them in the chapel.