The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (26 page)

That second week I played a game with myself – if it’s not better tomorrow, I’ll call the doctor – but I never did. By the weekend I was frightened and exhausted. I didn’t even bother to take my bathing suit to the club. I sat in the coffee shop and watched the boys playing tennis through the glass. The morning seemed endless, and when finally we did get home, I noticed the boys exchanging worried looks. To escape, I told them I had to work. I went to the granny flat, shut the door and collapsed on the couch for most of the afternoon. Peter brought me a tray at suppertime. He was seventeen years old, but he looked close to tears. He remembered the bad time after Ian died, too. I felt so guilty that I followed him to the house like a whipped dog.

“Okay, you guys, if you want to pamper me, go to it,” I said and I went upstairs, showered and crawled into bed. In the night the cramps and nausea hit me in waves. I got up and went and sat in the bathroom. But the memory of Peter coming to the granny flat with the tray fired something in me. I heard my voice, frightened but defiant. “I am not going to let this happen again. I am not going to give in.” Finally, I went back to bed and slept until morning.

Sunday was cold and sleety. The boys volunteered to stay home from church, and I was too weak to fight them. I stayed in bed most of the day and slept through the night. Monday morning I awoke feeling better – not completely well, but well enough to make some plans.

Hallowe’en was a week away. I decided to treat myself. Andy’s old administrative assistant, Rosemary Vickert, had opened a store a couple of weeks before. She’d sent me an announcement. The store was called Seasons, and it sold everything I could want for celebrating a holiday. I dressed with more than usual care, and noticed with a certain grim
pleasure that the Black Watch tartan skirt that had been snug around the waist at Thanksgiving was now not just comfortable but loose.

“Today I declare myself not only well but thin,” I said as I ran my finger around the waistband.

Rosie’s store was in a strip mall, the same strip mall where Ali Sutherland had once had her partnership. I parked as far away as possible from Ali’s office. Today I was well. I had no need of doctors.

Seasons was a wonderful store. Rosie was downtown on an errand but her partner was cheerful and unobtrusive and I found some great stuff, a Hallowe’en wreath with orange ribbons and little black cats for Mieka’s door, a spooky ghost windsock for our front porch and some cards for friends. I was standing by the cash register when I spotted a pumpkin suit in size two or thereabouts. On impulse I decided to buy it for Clay Evanson, Lori and Mark’s little guy. I’d just put the suit on the counter when Rosemary Vickert came in the door. When she saw me, her face lit up, but as quickly as it had come, the joy was gone.

“My God, Jo, what’s the matter with you? You look like hell.”

“I’ve had the flu, but I’m better now.”

“The hell you are,” she said. “How much weight have you lost?” She reached up and felt my forehead. “You feel like you’ve got a chill.”

“I’m better,” I repeated numbly.

“Take a look, lady,” she said and spun me around so that we were both looking in the mirror over a display case by the door. Suspended from the ceiling were dozens of rubber skeletons. Rosie swept them aside so I could see myself.

It was a shock. Rosemary, pink with wellness, was looking over my shoulder into the mirror. But she wasn’t looking at herself. She was looking at a yellow-skinned woman with
dry, chapped lips and sunken eyes. She was looking at me.

“What does the doctor say?” asked Rosie, looking over my shoulder at my mirror image.

“I haven’t been,” I said.

“Well, we’re going now,” she said. “Do you want to get taken to a doc in a box or do you want to see if someone at Ali’s old place can look at you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Jo,” she said, “we’re not negotiating whether you are going. We’re negotiating who you are going to see. Whether is off the table. Now who will it be? Somebody at the Medicentre or someone from Ali’s?”

“Ali’s,” I said numbly, looking at my feet. I knew I’d been defeated.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” the slim woman in the medical coat and the impossibly high heels said, smiling as she came into the examining room. “I can’t see anything. I’ve made an appointment with a gastroenterologist just in case, but my guess is you won’t need it. No harm in having an appointment, though. Those guys have waiting lists that are yea long.” She swung herself up on a stool at the side of the examining table. “Mrs. Kilbourn, I had a quick look at your records. I noticed you had a pretty bad time after your husband died and you know that was only a couple of years ago.”

“Three,” I said numbly. “It’ll be three years in December.”

She looked at me kindly. “You’ve been under an incredible amount of stress, you know. I read the papers, and it seems to me you’ve been right at the centre of Andy Boychuk’s murder – terrible in itself. It must have opened a lot of old wounds for you.”

“You’re saying this is all in my head.”

“I’m saying we can’t rule that out, Mrs. Kilbourn. As you
well know, the body often has its own way of coping with stress. Now this is what I think we should do. I’m going to prescribe something to help you over this rough spot – very short term. Sometimes that’s all it takes, you know – a tranquillizer to unknot the knots and let your body get in touch with its own wisdom. Why don’t we try that, and then if things don’t sort themselves out, you can keep the appointment with the gastroenterologist. His name is Dr. Philip Lee. He’s a bit brusque, but he’s good.”

“I know his brother, Mort.”

She looked mischievous. “Well, Mort got all the charm in that family, but they’re both brilliant.” She stood and smoothed her skirt. “I want to see you in a month – even if you’re okay.”

I walked into the waiting room, clutching my prescription for Valium and the slip of paper with the time and date of my appointment with Dr. Philip Lee. Rosemary Vickert looked up expectantly.

“Nothing wrong with me,” I said. “It’s all in my head.” I tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was jagged and forlorn.

Rosie jumped up and put her arms around my shoulder. “C’mon, Jo, let’s go someplace and have a sinful lunch. You can pay – punishment for scaring the …” She gave a sidelong glance at the doctor’s office. “For scaring the fecal matter out of me.”

I took a Valium with lunch, went home and slept through the afternoon. That night I went to Peter’s football game, came home, got into bed with the unauthorized biography of the
PM
and slept through the night.

The next morning in my daybook I wrote a tentative “Better” followed by a string of question marks. I had breakfast with the kids, took the dogs for their run, changed my clothes, grabbed the little pumpkin suit I’d bought for Clay
Evanson and drove to Wolf River. I took a deep breath when I pulled onto the overpass. “So far, so good,” I said aloud and then something went wrong in my chest muscles. I couldn’t move the air in and out of my lungs. I took a series of gulping breaths. I managed to keep the car on the overpass and get onto the highway. I pulled over onto the shoulder at almost exactly the same spot where Eve and I had stopped six weeks before.

There was a paper bag from a take-out place on the dashboard. I held it over my mouth and nose and breathed deeply. The bag smelled of stale grease and salt, but after a while, my breathing became regular again. I sat by the side of the road for a few minutes, frightened and angry. Then I said loudly, “I’m not giving in to this, you know,” put the car in gear and finished the drive to Wolf River.

For once, Lori Evanson was not immaculate. I had stopped in at Disciples for a cup of coffee and was told that Lori was home and ill. When she opened the door of the trailer she and Mark and Clay lived in, she certainly looked ill and, without her careful makeup, very young. She invited me in, turned off the soap opera she was watching, made a futile stab at picking up the toys that were everywhere in the sunny living room, then collapsed on the couch.

Clay’s eyes had been drawn by the bright colours of the bag from Seasons, and he grabbed at it.

“Oh, Clay, no.” Lori’s sweet singsong voice sounded weary.

“It’s all right, Lori. It’s a present for him.”

Like a child, she was off the couch and over to where Clay was, helping him open the bag.

When she saw the pumpkin suit, she began at once to pull it over his little T-shirt and jeans.

“Oh, Clay, you are going to be such a cute little Mr. Pumpkin.” She sat back on her heels and looked up at me
solemnly. Her eyes were as round and full of wonder as the eyes of her son. “How can I ever thank you?”

“It’s just a Hallowe’en costume, Lori. My kids are all grown up now – at least past the pumpkin stage. This was fun for me, and Clay really does look great.”

“Then I’ll just get up and give you a hug.” She was smiling when she reached her arms out to me but something she saw in my face killed the smile. My chest felt tight, as if something were squeezing it. Lori’s eyes were filled with concern. “Why, Mrs. Kilbourn, you’re sick. You look so very sick. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, it’s all in my head, Lori. I went to the doctor yesterday and she said it was just stress: Andy’s death and then Soren’s and then Eve – Mrs. Boychuk – getting arrested. I guess it’s just been too much.” My chest felt like it was caught in a vise. I tasted metal then my mouth filled with saliva. “It’s all in my head,” I said again lamely.

Lori looked at me and burst into tears. Clay, who was twirling in front of the window in his pumpkin costume, stopped and ran over to see what was wrong with his mother. Lori was sobbing brokenly, but between her sobs there were odd little fragments of self-accusation. “I’ve hurt you,” “It’s all my fault,” and “If I hadn’t done it, Mrs. Boychuk wouldn’t have …”

I went to her. When I bent to put my arms around her, the vise tightened on my chest. It felt as if my heart were skipping beats. I broke out in a clammy, cold sweat.

“Lori, why don’t you get us some tea, please.” I sounded sharp, but she got up and went into the kitchen.

I could hear her filling the kettle, still sniffling, getting down cups.

I sat and said under my breath, “You are not sick. It’s in your head, in your head.” My hands were shaking but I
managed to pull the bottle of Valium out of my purse and get a small, pale green pill into my mouth before Lori came back.

It helped – or at least it seemed to. Lori gave Clay some juice in a plastic glass that had a picture of Big Bird on it, and she poured our tea into blue and green striped mugs. I put three teaspoonfuls of sugar into the tea, and when I took a sip, the metal taste left my mouth. I really did begin to feel better. I tried to sound kind but firm.

“Now, what’s all this about Mrs. Boychuk’s problems being your fault?”

Lori was holding her mug in both hands, and she looked as if she were about to cry again. I remembered when she’d asked me to support her father-in-law. (“Mrs. Kilbourn, I’m not very smart. Sometimes I just have to trust the smart people to tell me what to do.”)

Well, I was smart people. “Lori, what’s all this about? Begin at the beginning and no tears. This is too important.”

She took a great hiccuping gulp of air, mopped at her eyes and began.

“Well, the beginning, I guess was …” She hesitated. “…  was the phone call I got the morning they found Soren passed away. But it was before he died. This person told me to call Mrs. Boychuk to make sure she was at Soren Eames’s office by 7:30 a.m. It was very early but it was important. So I called Mrs. Boychuk and told her, and she asked, ‘Is it about Carey? Is he all right?’ and I said it was something else altogether, and she said, ‘What’s it about?’ and I said just what my – the person told me to say, which was ‘You’ll just have to trust me, Eve or Mrs. Boychuk.’ ”

“That’s what you said? ‘Eve or Mrs. Boychuk’?”

“That’s what the person told me to say, Mrs. Kilbourn.” She looked at me confidingly. “And it worked because she said she would go, and then” – her lower lip began to quiver –
“and then after I got to work, I went over to the
CAP
Centre like I always do with some coffee and muffins for Soren, for his breakfast, you know, and there he was passed away and Mrs. Boychuk was all bloody and …” The scene was playing again in her mind, and she was beginning to hyperventilate.

“Easy, Lori, easy. Take a big breath … and another one … Better now?”

She nodded.

The vise was squeezing my chest again, but I got the words out. “You’ve done all the hard part, now I just need to know one other thing.”

“Yes?” She was steeling herself for the next question.

My heart was pounding in my chest. “Lori, who told you to phone Eve? Who told you to get her to Soren’s office that morning?”

There was silence in the sunny room. I could hear Clay Evanson in the kitchen opening drawers and talking to himself in a low baby voice.

“Lori?” I sounded strong, like the old Jo.

“Yes, Mrs. Kilbourn?”

“I have to know who called you that morning.”

She looked at me craftily. “Promise you won’t tell?”

“I can’t promise that, Lori, you know that. This is too important for games,” I said sternly.

She took a breath, licked her lips and out it came. “The person who told me to phone was my mother-in-law, Mrs. Julie Evanson.” Then she sat back and looked at me expectantly.

I was stunned. “But why? Did Julie give you any explanation?”

“Just that if Mrs. Boychuk was in Soren’s office that morning, he could help her.”

“Help her what, Lori?”

“I didn’t ask, Mrs. Kilbourn. I didn’t ask because Mrs. Evanson scares me. She’s never liked me because I was p.g. when Mark married me.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“I was p.g. – pregnant,” she whispered. “And Mrs. Evanson has, you know, held it against me, so when she asked me to do this …” Her face was clouding over again. “She promised me it would be okay, that Soren would help Mrs. Boychuk. But it wasn’t okay and then after when I wanted to go to the police she yelled at me and said I was stupid, which I know, and that Mr. Evanson, my father-in-law, would never become leader if this came out and if he didn’t it would be my fault. Mrs. Evanson may be a witch, but Mr. Evanson has always been so good to me, and I wouldn’t betray him for anything. I knew it was wrong not to tell, but what could I do? And then when I saw you so sick from worrying … I hope it was right to tell you.”