Gail Bowen - The Last Good Day

After I’d dressed, my freshly ironed dress revealed upper arms that weren’t bad for a woman of fifty-five. As I drove over to the cathedral for the funeral, I thought it was possible I’d make it to the end of the day.

I was early, but parking was already a problem. The sky was cloudless and the temperature soaring – a perfect day to get out of the city – but half an hour before the funeral Mass, the streets around the cathedral were choked. The first parking spot I found was four blocks away. By the time I climbed the steps to Holy Rosary, my newly blond roots were dark with sweat, and I was grateful to step inside and let the cool wash over me. I found a spot at the end of a pew halfway up the aisle. I knelt, said a prayer, then sat back and looked around.

Regina is a city of 185,000, but lives intersect, and many of the faces in Holy Rosary were familiar to me. When I spotted a colleague from the university, or a friend from politics or the media, we exchanged the small, awkward smiles people exchange on such occasions, then turned back to our programs as if somehow in that brief obituary and description of the order of service, we could discover the reason we were sitting in a shadowy church on a brilliant July afternoon mourning a man who had chosen death over a seemingly gilded life.

As always at funerals, there were surprises, people whose connection with the deceased was not immediately apparent. Given his puzzling links with the residents of Lawyers’ Bay, Alex Kequahtooway’s presence wasn’t exactly a shocker, but as I glanced around the congregation I spotted three of Alex’s colleagues from the Regina force. In the normal run of things, the relationship between the police force and the legal community was not chummy, but Chris Altieri’s specialty had been family law, and it seemed no one was immune to domestic problems.

When my friend Detective Robert Hallam came up the aisle, I touched his arm, and he stopped to talk. His pleasure at seeing me warmed my heart. Married late and happily, Robert Hallam was the most uxorious of men. His wife, Rosalie, had been the administrative assistant in the political-science department in which I taught, and, in Robert’s books, anyone of whom his Rosalie approved was aces.

As always, Robert was a tonsorial and sartorial delight. His steel-grey crewcut and moustache were precision-trimmed. His lightweight beige jacket and slacks were without wrinkle, and the Windsor knot in his coffee-and-cream tie was impeccable. He extended his hand. “How are you, Joanne? I never see you, now that Rosalie’s retired, and you and Alex are…” He flushed with embarrassment.

“No longer seeing one another,” I finished his sentence. “It’s all right, Robert. I’m over it.”

His face softened with concern. “All the same, it can’t be easy for you being in the same room as her, even if it is at a funeral.”

I met his eyes. “You’ve lost me,” I said. “Being in the same room as whom?”

Robert did a quick shoulder check to see who was in hearing distance. Many were. Experienced cop that he was, Robert dropped his voice. “The woman the inspector has… become intimate with,” he whispered. He peered at me anxiously. “You must have known she’d be here today.”

It took me a moment to absorb the information. I’d never known the identity of the woman with whom Alex had become involved, and the knowledge that she was somewhere in the cathedral made my heart pound. I struggled to appear calm. “I haven’t seen her yet,” I said.

“Well, Mrs. Lily Falconer is outside, dressed to the nines, bold as brass, waiting to make the grand entrance with her husband and the other big shots.” Robert’s tone was acid.

My mind shattered in a dozen directions. Lily Falconer was Alex’s lover. It all made sense: her casual reference to Alex by his first name the day after the murder; the number of times the silver Audi had pulled into the Falconers’ driveway; Alex’s confidence that he was well acquainted with the people at Lawyers’ Bay. Remembering how harrowed Alex had looked when he’d interviewed me, I experienced a flash of mean-spirited gratification. If he and Lily Falconer were having an affair, it wasn’t bringing him much pleasure.

“Anyway, I think he’s crazy.” Robert was irate, and in the heat of the moment he abandoned his stage whisper. “No two ways about it, Lily Falconer is a looker, but you’re no slouch, Joanne, and you’re not married to a millionaire lawyer who could make the inspector’s life hell.” The message had been delivered loud and clear, and Robert’s expression was sheepish as he gazed around to gauge the number of people who had been in earshot. “I’d better get back to work,” he said.

“Wait,” I said. “Robert, why are you here today? Is there something suspicious about Chris Altieri’s death?”

Robert flicked a piece of lint off his jacket. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire. That’s all I can say, Joanne. That, and remember your old friends. I know Rosalie would love it if you came by the house sometime. She’s decorated up a storm. She’s painted our bedroom something called wasabi green.”

“Very trendy,” I said. “Do you like it?”

“I never thought I’d sleep in a room the colour of Japanese horseradish,” he said. “But Rosalie said it would grow on me, and she was right. Every day I like that wasabi green a little more.”

There are times when the truth sets you free and there are times when it just makes you feel like shit. Robert’s revelation fell into the second category. I had been angry and hurt when my relationship with Alex ended, but I had never doubted the fact that when we had been happy, his commitment to me had been as deep as mine to him. It seemed I’d been wrong.

My eyes stung. Luckily, a funeral is one of the few places where a woman can cry without drawing attention to herself. I was in the process of having a quiet weep when someone slid into the place next to me on the pew. I dabbed at my eyes, stuck my hanky in my purse, and cursed my luck. Still teary, I opened my funeral program. The photo Delia had taken from Harriet Hynd’s album had been printed on good-quality bond and included as an insert. There was no text explaining why it was there. None was needed. Everyone knew the identity of those five young people on the cusp of their stellar lives. But the cosmos had shifted for them. The shining future had brought betrayal, bitterness, brokenness, and violent death. They, too, had discovered that we stand on shifting sand.

The first thing I noticed about the young woman who sat down next to me was the spray of creamy lilies in her hand. They were as simple and exquisite as she herself was. She was dressed expensively in a silk sheath woven with a pattern of birds and flowers and designed to underscore the perfection of her arms and legs. As soon I saw her profile, I recognized her. Her name was Patsy Choi. Her hair was shorter and more chic than it had been three years earlier when she was at the centre of one of our nation’s most bitterly fought and divisive lawsuits, but she had been a girl then, just fourteen. As the small string orchestra played the opening notes of the processional, she stiffened. Not that long ago, she had been a musician herself, a promising violinist. The promise had been cut short when, after an argument about practising, her uncle and guardian smashed her fingers to a pulp.

Christopher Altieri had been her lawyer, and after a protracted trial in which battalions of expert witnesses sought to discredit or destroy the principals and one another, Patsy Choi had been awarded a seven-figure judgement. As we stood to greet the funeral party, Patsy placed the lilies on the pew, picked up the hymnal, and began to sing. Her hands were mutilated but functional. Perhaps the same could now be said of her life, and as I glanced around the cathedral, I wondered how many of those who’d come to celebrate Christopher Altieri’s time on this earth had found it easier to bear their own crosses because of him.