The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (36 page)

Angus rolled up the window and started the engine. “I’d go nuts if I had a father like that,” he said. “Why does he put up with it?”

“No option, I guess.”

As we waited for a camper to pass, I glanced out the back window. Val hadn’t moved, but his father had come out of the bungalow and started to walk towards him. When his father got close, Val said something to him; then, without breaking stride, the older man raised his hand and cuffed Val across the side of the head.

I was the only one who saw. Angus was busy checking for traffic on the road, and Taylor was back to looking for signs. Suddenly, she crowed with delight. “Hey, there’s one I missed.” The sign she’d spotted was handmade, an arrow pointing back to the station from which we’d just come. Taylor read the words on the arrow carefully. “Masluk & Son, Gas, Food, Friendly Service.”

We got home around 4:00. There were no messages on the machine, and given the chaotic state of my feelings about Jill, I was unsure whether that was good news or bad. Angus took the dogs out for a run, then went off to the 7-Eleven, pregame hangout of choice among the sportsmen in Angus’s circle. Taylor got out her sketchpad and drew pictures of Regina Beach for a while, then she wandered off to choose her outfit for the dinner party. When she came up to my bedroom for inspection, I was stunned. Left to her own devices, Taylor was a whimsical dresser, but that night she was right on the money: a plaid ruffle skirt, a white pullover with a plaid diamond design, dark green leotards, and her best mary-janes. She’d even brushed her hair. It was obviously a rite-of-passage day.

Ed and Barry lived on a quiet crescent near the university. Their house overlooked the bird sanctuary and the campus, and it was clear when Ed shepherded us inside that they had designed their split-level to take full advantage of the view. The house was built into a rise so that you entered on one floor, but immediately moved up a short flight of stairs to the airy brightness of a large room that seemed to be made up entirely of floor-to-ceiling windows.

Ed led us down a short corridor to the kitchen. Barry Levitt was waiting for us. He was a small man with a receding hairline he made no effort to hide and a trim body he obviously worked hard to preserve. Ed had told me that he and Barry were the same age, forty, but Barry had the kind of charm that would be described as boyish until the day he moved into the seniors’ complex. That night he was wearing an open-necked sports shirt the colour of a cut peach and a black denim bib apron. He didn’t look up when we came in. All his attention was focused on the steaming pot of seafood he was dumping into a mixing bowl of rice.

When the pot that had held the seafood was empty, Barry stepped back and gestured for us to move closer so we could peer into the bowl.

Taylor stood on tiptoe and looked down. “Mussels,” she said happily, “and shrimp and scallops and some things I don’t know.”

“Well, let’s see,” said Barry. “I remember throwing a squid in there, and some clams, and chicken, and a very succulent-looking lobster. I think that’s the final tally.”

“Paella,” I said, inhaling deeply. “One of the great dishes of the world. If you can bottle that aroma, I’ll be your first customer.”

Barry grinned and waved his stirring spoon in the air. “Somebody get these discerning women a drink.”

“We have a pitcher of sangria,” Ed said, “and we have a cabinet of what Barry’s father’s bar book called ‘the most notable potables.’ ”

“Sangria will be fine,” I said.

He turned to Taylor. “And for you, we have all the ingredients for a Shirley Temple. Even the umbrella.”

There is something ceremonial about a drink with an umbrella, and Taylor accepted her Shirley Temple gravely and waited till she was safely seated at the kitchen table before she took a sip. For a few moments, she basked in sophistication, then her eyes grew huge and she leaped up and grabbed my arm.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing towards the living room, “they have a Fafard bronze horse! In their house! Jo, you told me real people could never afford to buy those horses because they cost fifteen thousand dollars.”

Barry raised an eyebrow. “How old is Taylor?”

“Six, but she’s pretty serious about art. Her mother was Sally Love.”

Barry and Ed exchanged a quick glance. “We have a painting your mother did,” Ed said gently. “Would you like to see it?”

Taylor put down her drink, then she went over to Ed and took his hand. “Let’s go,” she said.

The Sally Love painting Barry and Ed owned was an oil on canvas, about three feet by two and a half. It was a spring scene. Two men wearing gardening clothes and soft shapeless hats were working in a back yard incandescent with tulips, daffodils, and a drift of wild iris. The colours of the blossoms were heart-stoppingly vibrant, and the brushwork was so careful that you felt you could touch the petals, but it was the figures of the men that drew your eye. In painting them, Sally had used muted colours and lines that curved to suggest both age and absolute harmony. You couldn’t look at the painting without knowing that the old gardeners were among the lucky few who get to live out a life of quiet joy.

“She was an amazing artist,” Ed said.

“She was an amazing woman.” I said.

Taylor turned to me. “I dream about her, but I can’t remember her. Not really.”

“Go up and touch the painting,” Ed said.

“Jo says you’re not supposed to …,” Taylor said.

“Jo’s right,” Ed agreed. “But this is a special circumstance. I think your mother would want you to touch her painting. After all, she touched it all the time when she was making it.”

Taylor approached the painting slowly. For a few moments, she just looked up at it, taking it in. Finally, she reached out and traced the petals of an iris with her fingertips. When she turned back to Ed, there was a look on her face that I’d never seen before.

“Is it okay if I just stay here for a while?”

Ed bowed in her direction. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll bring your Shirley Temple.” He gave me a quick look. “Why don’t
we grab our jackets and take our drinks outside. Taylor might enjoy some time alone, and it is a lovely night.”

When Ed suggested that Barry join us, he waved us off. He was brushing focaccia with rosemary oil, and he said he’d enjoy our company more when everybody had finished eating and he could relax. So it was just Ed and me on the deck. We moved our chairs so we could look out at the university, and the view was worth the effort. The air was heavy with moisture, and in the late afternoon light the campus shimmered, as pastoral and idyllic as its picture in the university calendar.

For a few minutes we were silent, absorbed by our separate thoughts. Finally, Ed said, “Would you rather I hadn’t suggested that Taylor look at her mother’s painting?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m glad you did. Sally gave me a painting not long before she died. It’s in my bedroom, but for the first year Taylor came to us, she refused to look at it. Lately, she’s been spending quite a bit of time there.”

“A way of being close to her mother.”

“So it seems.”

Ed nodded. “My father was killed in a car accident before I was born. He was a trumpet player. When I got old enough, I used to spend hours with his old trumpet. Holding something he had held was the only way I knew to bring him close.”

“I hope Taylor can feel that connection,” I said. “Her mother’s death came at the wrong time for her.”

Ed looked thoughtful. “Is there a right time to lose a parent?” he asked.

“I guess not,” I said. “But the timing in Taylor’s case was particularly savage. I think when Sally died, she had just begun to realize how good it could be to have a daughter.”

“Motherhood didn’t come easily to her?”

“I don’t think Sally had a maternal bone in her body, but at the end, there was a bond.” I sipped my sangria. “It had a
lot to do with art. Taylor has real talent. When she saw that, Sally was determined to give Taylor the best beginning an artist could have.”

“That sounds a little cold.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t. It was the only way Sally had of loving. I guess love comes in all shapes and sizes.”

Ed smiled. “Tell me about it.”

“I don’t think I have to,” I said. “But it took Sally a long time to realize that there was room in her life for something besides her work. In a lot of ways, Taylor was her second chance.”

Ed’s face darkened, and he looked away. “That’s the merciless aspect of death, isn’t it? The taking away of all our second chances.” He paused, then he turned to face me. “Reed Gallagher called me the night he died. I wouldn’t talk to him.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Oh, I can be a real prima donna, and a real ass. Just ask Barry. Anyway, that night I was both.”

“What happened?”

“It was all so stupid. That morning Reed had come to my office with some terrific news. You know about our Co-op Internship Program, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “The kids in the Politics and the Media class have been agonizing over where they’re going to be placed for months.”

Ed shrugged. “You can’t blame them. It’s a big step. They can’t graduate until they’ve done their internship, and it’s a great chance for them to make some connections. We have support from some pretty impressive potential employers. But that week we’d scored a real coup. The
Globe and Mail
had agreed to take one of our students.”

“That was a coup,” I said. “The grande dame.”

“It was all Reed’s doing. Of course, we knew as soon as we heard that we’d have to rearrange all our placements.”

“You couldn’t just bump everybody up a notch?”

Ed shook his head. “No. There are always personal considerations: kids with family obligations, or just a gut feeling that intern A and placement C might be a bad mix. Reed suggested we meet at the Edgewater to hash it all out. He said we needed privacy and perspective, so it was better to meet off campus. We arranged to meet at three. When I got there, the hostess said Reed had left a message that he had a student to see, but he’d be there by quarter after. I waited till four-thirty, but he never showed.”

“So you were mad because he stood you up.”

Ed winced. “It sounds so childish when you put it that way, but that’s about it. My only excuse is that I’d had a lousy day, and by the time I got home, I was fuming. Reed called the house just before dinner, and I told Barry to tell him to go to hell. Of course, Barry just said I was unable to come to the phone.” Ed shook his head in disgust. “It was so petty. Anyway, that was it. The next night I heard he was dead.”

I walked over and stood beside him. Across the road, some students ran out of the classroom building and began to throw a ball around on the lawn. They were wearing shorts and T-shirts. They must have been cold, but they were Prairie kids and it had been a long winter. Exams were still three weeks away, and spring and hormones were working their magic. As I watched them, I felt a sharp pang of envy.

Ed Mariani seemed to read my mind. “Remember when the biggest problem in our lives was Geology?”

“It was Physics for me.” I touched his arm. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. It sounds to me as if Reed just wanted to apologize for not showing up at the Edgewater.”

“I hope you’re right, Joanne. I’d hate to think I’d failed him. He was always good to me.” Ed balanced his glass carefully on the rail. “The first day he was here, he sought me
out. Of course, my ego was smarting, because he’d gotten the job I thought was going to be mine. Reed picked up on how wounded I was. He told me how much he admired my work, and how glad he was, for his own sake, that I’d withdrawn my name from consideration. Then you know what he did?” Ed smiled at the memory. “He said he thought it would be a good idea if we got drunk together.”

“And you did?”

Ed shuddered. “Did we ever. I felt like the inside of a goat the next day, but it was worth it.”

“That good, huh?”

“Yeah, it was fun, but it was useful too. There’d been some ugliness when I’d put my name into contention for the director’s job.”

“The kind of ugliness you could have taken to the Human Rights Commission?”

“No. I’m used to dealing with overt prejudice; this was more insidious, but from a couple of things Reed said that night, it was pretty apparent he hadn’t anything to do with it. That was such a relief. And, to be fair, Reed really was a better choice for the job. The school needed somebody who had significant connections and strong administrative skills, and that wasn’t me.”

“Sounds like your boys’ night out really cleared the air,” I said.

Ed’s expression was sombre. “It did. It was a good evening; unfortunately it wasn’t the last one.” He took a long swallow of his drink. “We spent some time together the Wednesday before Reed died. I must have replayed the evening a hundred times, wondering if there was something I could have said or done that might have changed what happened. But, at the time, it just seemed like an ordinary evening. We’d been working late on the budget for next year, and we went back to
the Faculty Club for a drink. Reed was in a strange mood. He was always a serious drinker, but that night he was drinking to get drunk. I wouldn’t have cared, except that whatever the problem was, the liquor wasn’t helping. The more he drank, the more miserable he seemed to get. Finally, I asked Reed if he wanted to talk about whatever it was that was troubling him.”

“And he didn’t?”

“No … so, of course, I resorted to the usual bromides – told him that anytime he wanted to talk, I was there, and he could trust me not to betray his confidence.” Ed looked perplexed. “It was just one of those things people say when they don’t know what else to say, but Reed picked up on it. Joanne, he was so angry and so bitter. He said, ‘I’ll give you some advice: don’t ever tell people they can trust you, and don’t ever believe for a moment that you can trust them.’ ”

“I didn’t know Reed well,” I said, “but he never struck me as a cynic.”

“He wasn’t. Something had happened.”

“Do you have any idea what?”

“My guess is it was his marriage.”

“Did he say anything?”