Gail Bowen - The Last Good Day

She looked genuinely surprised. “Why would it give me comfort?”

“Obviously you two had differences,” I said. “It must be a relief to know that he wanted to reconcile them.”

Anne leaned across the table and locked eyes with mine. “Joanne, I barely knew Christopher Altieri. I went to him because I was apprehensive about what had happened to a friend who’d worked for Falconer Shreve and left abruptly. I’d met Chris a couple of times at parties, and he’d always seemed like a pretty decent guy.”

“But he wasn’t decent to you.”

“No,” Anne said. “When I asked him for reassurance that all was well with my friend, he was evasive. He promised to look into things and get back to me, but he never did. And he never returned my calls. I think the night he died, he’d decided to tell the truth.”

“And you think there’s some connection between Chris’s death and what happened to your friend.”

Anne picked up her napkin and folded it carefully into the smallest possible square. “I don’t even know if anything did happen to her. She may have simply decided to move on and not look back. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

“But you don’t believe them.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would leave without saying goodbye, but people surprise us all the time, don’t they?”

I looked out the window. Across the street in the park, lovers were strolling hand in hand and children were fighting over swings. Their sunny world was seductive. If I were to agree with Anne Millar that people were unpredictable, finish my drink, and thank her for her hospitality, I could be part of that sunny world in five minutes.

The temptation was real, but so was the evidence that the universe was not unfolding as it should. A man I was certain cared for me had been unfaithful with the wife of a Falconer Shreve partner, a Falconer Shreve partner who seemed to be finding his way back from despair had committed suicide, and now a young lawyer at Falconer Shreve had left under unsettling circumstances. I turned to Anne Millar. “Tell me about your friend,” I said.

The day’s events had clearly rattled Anne, but she didn’t allow emotion to distort her narrative. She told her story well, without digression or unnecessary detail.

“Her name was Clare Mackey,” Anne began. Neither of us responded to the fact that she referred to Clare in the past tense. “We ran together,” Anne continued. “It started out casually enough – we both had the same route in the mornings, down Lorne, into the park, and around the lake.”

“That’s my route, too,” I said. “At least the lake part.”

“Six-thirty in the summer, seven in the winter,” Anne said. “Are you earlier or later?”

“Earlier,” I said.

Anne sighed. “And we thought we were virtuous.”

“I have a virtuous dog,” I said.

The comment earned me a smile. “Anyway,” Anne said, “Clare and I started running together. You know how informal those things are. We’d just meet up, do a few stretches, and start. We discovered early on that we were both lawyers. Every so often one of us would have a breakfast meeting, and we agreed to let the other know by e-mail so nobody had to hang around.” Anne’s face clouded. “Last November 11, Clare didn’t show up. It was a holiday; I thought maybe she’d decided to sleep in. I waited for a few minutes, but it looked like rain, so I got in my run, came back here, and checked my e-mail. There was no message.

“That night we had an ice storm, so the next morning I ran at the Y. Same thing the next day, but before I left home I e-mailed Clare asking if she wanted to join me. She didn’t show up, and she didn’t respond to my note. The third day the streets were clear, so I waited for her at the corner of Lorne and Victoria. Another no-show. When I got home, I e-mailed her and asked if she was okay.” Anne took a small sip of her drink. “She answered right away. Clare’s e-mail name was ‘roadrunner.’ I was so relieved to see it pop up on my screen. Her note said that she was in Vancouver. She’d flown out for an interview with an all-female law firm there – her dream. She said she’d let me know if she got the job. A couple of days later she e-mailed to say everything had worked out. The new firm had liked her, she’d liked them, and she was going to start immediately. I sent congratulations and asked her to stay in touch.”

“But Clare didn’t stay in touch,” I said.

“No.” Anne’s eyes were troubled. “To be honest, there was no particular reason why she should have. I hope I haven’t misrepresented our relationship, Joanne. We were just friendly acquaintances. Clare and I ran together, but we didn’t chat a lot. We were both pretty internal people. I think we both saw running as a good way to get centred for the day.”

“Then what’s the problem?” I asked. “The way you’ve explained the situation, everything sounds perfectly normal.”

Anne clenched her fists in frustration. “I know it does. It just doesn’t ring true – at least not to me. Clare wasn’t impulsive. She was methodical. She saw things through. No matter how good the job at the law firm in Vancouver was, she wouldn’t have walked away from Falconer Shreve without clearing off her files.”

“You think something happened at Falconer Shreve to make her want to leave?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that nothing adds up. A few weeks before she moved away, Clare asked me about vacancies here at the Balfour – she was interested in buying a condo, ‘putting down roots,’ to use her term. If anything went wrong at Falconer Shreve, it must have been very sudden and very serious.”

I felt a chill. “And you went to Chris Altieri to ask if he knew why Clare had left so abruptly.”

“Yes. And he was ready with an answer. He corroborated all the information in the e-mail. He said Falconer Shreve had been sorry to lose Clare, but she’d been offered her dream job, so they let her go. He also said the partners found it easier to make the decision because they knew they wouldn’t have any trouble replacing Clare.”

“At least that part is true,” I said. “Falconer Shreve is a hot ticket. Any young lawyer with an ounce of ambition would give her eye teeth to work there.”

“Chris pointed that out, too, and I bought his explanation. We were quite matey. Then just as I was leaving I asked Chris if he could give me the name of the firm Clare was working for. He became flustered. He said he couldn’t remember the name, but if I left him my card, he’d send me the information. He was so anxious to get me out of the office he almost pushed me out the door.”

“And he never got in touch.”

“No, so I started looking elsewhere for information.”

“You were that concerned.”

“Concerned and, to be honest, pissed off. I don’t like being stonewalled. At any rate, I started asking around. The legal community here is a pretty small one, so it wasn’t hard to find people who’d had some contact with Clare. As it turned out, she’d moved to Regina only last spring.”

“And she left Falconer Shreve in November.”

Anne’s nod was emphatic. “The timing is all wrong, isn’t it? How could she move here in April, be happy enough to consider settling permanently in September, and then just leave?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I felt my nerve ends tingle.

“It didn’t make sense to me either,” Anne said. “And then, towards the end of November, I got an electronic card from Clare, thanking me for being such a good friend.”

“And that didn’t reassure you?”

“It made me even more anxious. None of the women I know would dream of sending an e-card thanking another woman for her friendship, but I went along with the charade. I replied, thanking Clare for the card, but I also asked a question only Clare could answer.”