Gail Bowen - The Last Good Day

“Not being part of your life meant he shouldn’t be part of mine?” I could hear the resentment in my son’s voice.

“Angus, I’m not the bad guy here. It was Alex’s choice. He was the one who walked away. I wanted us to stay together.”

“He wanted that, too, Mum. You wouldn’t be so harsh if you’d seen him the night I lost my licence. Alex has always been on top of things. When he came to drive me to Mr. Bean, he looked beaten down. And all the time that he kept talking about decisions and dragging everything along with you, it wasn’t like a lecture. It was as if he was talking about himself.”

“Angus…”

“Mum, let me finish… please. The day after Chris Altieri died, it was worse. Alex just kept looking at me. It was bugging me so I asked him to stop. He apologized, then he said he had to convince himself that I was okay.”

“He was a day late and a dollar short there, wasn’t he?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if Alex had been concerned about our family, he could have called, and he didn’t. Not once in all the months after he left.”

“He wanted to, Mum.”

“Then why didn’t he pick up the phone?”

“I don’t know,” Angus said miserably. “All I know is, the day after Chris died, Alex told me that the best time of his life was his time with us, and he’d do anything to keep us from grief. Do you have any idea what he was talking about?”

“No,” I said. “Maybe some day, when everyone’s feeling less fragile, we can talk about it.”

“That’d be good,” Angus said.

“I agree,” I said. “Now, reassure me. You really have learned not to get behind the wheel when you’ve had a drink?”

“I’ve learned,” Angus said. “That DUI course I took sealed it. I made friends with this guy named Pedro who got picked up on his birthday. He was so drunk from his party that he doesn’t remember getting behind the wheel. Wouldn’t want to run into Pedro on the highway. Lots of other scary stories. We got treated like infants for the whole weekend, but we deserved it. Oh yeah, the guy who was my DUI instructor was also the guy who took me out for my driver’s test. How about that?”

“Cosmic irony,” I said. “So is the charge going to be permanently on your licence?”

“Nope,” Angus said. “I was lucky. Didn’t run into Pedro. Didn’t hurt anybody else. Nothing on my record permanently. Horseshoes up my ass but I’m not going to push it.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll sleep better knowing that.” Then I put my arms around my son and, despite the gawkers in the cars going by, I held him close for a long time.

There was a message on my cellphone when I got back to the cottage. It was Maggie Niewinski. I called her back.

She sounded breathless. “Glad you caught me,” she said. “I was just on my way downtown.”

“Shall I call later?”

Maggie laughed. “No, I’m not due in court for an hour. I thought, since I was in Regina, I’d check out the sales. I was just calling to bring you up to speed.”

“Have you found something out?”

“Nothing encouraging. Sandra Mikalonis went to Clare’s apartment building and talked to the super. He remembered Clare’s leave-taking very vividly, mostly because it took place so quickly, and he didn’t deal with Clare face to face. In fact, the super doesn’t remember seeing Clare at all after the first week in November.”

“Did he usually see her?”

“Yes. She lived at the Waverly on College Avenue. It’s not one of those vast, soulless places. The super saw Clare most mornings when she came back from her run. He says what everyone says. Clare was pleasant but she kept to herself. He also says he was surprised that Clare never knocked at his door to say goodbye. He thought they were friends.”

“Was the lease up?”

“It was a sublet. The original tenant came back on the first of January. Clare’s rent had been paid until December 31.”

“Smooth as silk,” I said.

“Yes,” Maggie said. “Someone arranged for a moving company to come in and pack for Clare – everything, right down to the toilet paper on the roll, the super said.”

“Where did Clare’s furniture get shipped?”

“A warehouse in Vancouver. Joanne, it’s still there. Clare’s things were never claimed.”

I felt the last small wisp of hope escape. “Have you told the police?”

“Yes, and we think it’s time we told the partners at Falconer Shreve what we know. They think they’ve pulled this off. We have to show them that they haven’t – that we’re carrying out our own investigation and that, unlike Inspector Kequahtooway, we can’t be bribed.”

My spirits sank. “You think that’s what happened, that someone at Falconer Shreve paid the inspector to shut down the investigation?”

Maggie made no attempt to check the asperity in her voice. “Do you have a better explanation? Anyway, it’s obvious that someone at Falconer Shreve knows something. They’ve got a firewall of administrative assistants and juniors at their office. We’re thinking that if we come out to Lawyers’ Bay, we can go for a walk on the beach, make ourselves conspicuous. Then maybe someone who needs a chance to talk will realize they can talk to us. What do you think?”

I remembered the calm determination of Clare Mackey’s face in her graduation portrait. “I think it’s worth a shot,” I said. “And, Maggie, why don’t you give Anne Millar a call and tell her what you’re planning to do? She might want to be a part of it.”

Maggie sighed. “Good idea. I’ll need her number.”

I gave Maggie Anne’s number. “I guess the next step is to decide when you’re coming. Zack’s been working from his cottage and Blake and Delia both drive out after work. So I guess you can pick your evening.”

“How about tomorrow around seven?”

“Tomorrow’s fine,” I said.

“Thanks for helping, Joanne. I know that Clare is just a name to you, but she was a decent human being.”

“That’s reason enough,” I said.

I dressed with more than usual care for my evening with Zack Shreve. I was under no illusions about the motive behind his dinner invitation. From the night that he manoeuvred his chair into the gazebo bent on discovering and discrediting what Chris Altieri told me, Zack had his sights trained on me. He wasn’t sure what I knew or where I fit into the picture, but he wasn’t about to let me disappear from his range of vision. Now I had my own reasons for establishing rapport. So when Zack called from his car to say he was out front, I smoothed the mauve-grey silk of my favourite summer shirt and slacks, freshened my lipstick, and took a deep breath. It seemed entirely possible that, to quote Bette Davis’s stinging appraisal, we were in for a bumpy ride.

We got off to a good start. Seated behind the wheel of his white Jaguar, Zack could have been a GQ cover: great tan; jacket, slacks, and shirt in coordinated shades of taupe and coffee; dark hair still curling damply from the shower. He leaned across and opened the door on the passenger side. “You look sensational,” he said.

I slid in beside him. “You’re looking pretty tasty yourself,” I said. “Shall we get started?”

The lake on which Lawyers’ Bay was situated was one of a quartet known as the Calling Lakes, which wound through the Qu’Appelle Valley. The Stone House restaurant was on the lake next to ours. Zack had put the top down on his convertible, and we drove to the restaurant through the shimmer of heat in the colour-drenched world of high summer.

On the way there, Zack told me that the Stone House had once been the summer home of a wealthy American who had fallen in love with the history and legends of the Qu’Appelle Valley. Fired by tales of buffalo runs, the American had built his house not on the lake, but far above it at a point where a man could have stood and watched the buffalo pour like a mighty and endless river over the hills around him. The view from the restaurant was reputed to be spectacular, but the road there was steep and filled with hairpin turns, and as Zack negotiated them, my nerves were on full alert.