The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (8 page)

“Some people who were sitting near the head table say they heard you call her crazy.”

“She was crazy,” I said, “and dangerous.”

“And you’re glad she’s dead.”

I looked at him. He was older than his brother, and harder. I remember Perry telling me his brother was the first Indian to make inspector on the Regina police force. I guess he’d had to be tough, but there was something about him that invited trust. I took a deep breath.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m glad she’s dead. But Inspector Kequahtooway, I didn’t kill her.”

He made a final note in his scribbler, and capped his pen. “That’s good news,” he said. He stood and motioned towards me. “You can go now, Mrs. Kilbourn. I guess I don’t have to tell you that we’ll expect you to keep us aware of any travel plans.”

When I stood up, my legs were so heavy I knew I’d be lucky to make it across the room. “Travel won’t be a problem,” I said. “Goodnight, Inspector.”

It was a little after 2:00 a.m. when I got home. I checked on Angus and Taylor, showered, put on my most comforting flannelette nightie, and climbed into bed. I was bone-tired, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw the red wound in Maureen Gault’s white face: Cherries in the Snow.

Finally, I gave up and went down to the kitchen. Hilda was sitting at the table, drinking tea and reading a book titled
Varieties of Visual Experience
.

“Boning up on Abstract Expressionism?” I asked, and then, I began to sob.

Hilda leaped up and put her arms around me. “Good God, Joanne, what’s the matter? It’s not one of the children …?”

“No, it’s not the children,” I said. “It’s me. Hilda, I’m in trouble …”

I started to tell her about Maureen, but I guess I wasn’t making much sense, because she stopped me.

“Let me get you some tea,” she said. “Then you can start again. This time, tell me what happened in chronological order. Nothing calms the nerves more effectively than logic.”

Hilda poured half a mug of steaming tea, then she went into the dining room and came back with a bottle of Metaxa. She added a generous shot of brandy to the tea and handed the mug to me. “Drink your tea,” she said, “then we’ll talk.”

An hour later, when I went to bed, I slept. It was a good thing I did, because the next morning when I picked up the paper, I knew it was going to be a long day. The paper was filled with stories about Maureen Gault’s murder and, whatever their starting point, by the final paragraph they all had an arrow pointing at me.

I could feel the panic rising, and when the phone rang, I froze. “Whoever you are, you’d better have good news,” I said as I picked up the receiver. I was in luck. It was my daughter, Mieka, sounding as exuberant as a woman should when she was on a holiday with her new husband.

“Mum, guess where I am.”

“Some place sunny and warm, I hope.”

“I’m sitting at a table in a courtyard at the Richelieu Hotel in New Orleans, and I just had grits for the first time in my life.”

“And you phoned to tell me,” I said.

“No, I phoned to tell you that Greg and I got the same room you and Daddy had when you stayed here on your honeymoon.”

A flash of memory. Lying in each other’s arms, watching the overhead fan stir the soupy Louisiana air, listening to the
sounds of the French Quarter drift through the open doors to our balcony.

“I hope that room’s as magical for you as it was for us.”

“It is,” she said softly.

I could feel the lump in my throat. “I’d better let you get back to your grits while they’re still hot,” I said. “As I remember it, grits need all the help they can get. And, Mieka, tell Greg thanks.”

“For what?”

“For making you so happy.”

“I will,” she said. “And you tell everybody there hello from us. We’ll call on Taylor’s birthday.”

I’d just hung up when my oldest son, Peter, called from Saskatoon. He tried to be reassuring, but I could tell from his voice that the stories in the Saskatoon paper must have been pretty bleak.

“You know, Mum, I think I’d better come home for a while,” he said.

“In the middle of term?” I said. “Don’t be crazy. You know the kind of marks you need to get into veterinary medicine. Besides, by the time you get down here, this will have blown over.”

“Do you really think so, Mum?”

“No, but I really do think you’re better off there. Pete, if I need you, I know you can be in Regina in three hours. At the moment, that makes me feel a lot better than having you jeopardize your term by coming here to hold my hand.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Now let me tell you about what your sister and Greg are doing.”

“Eating everything that’s not nailed down, I’ll bet,” he said.

“You got it,” I said. By the time I finished telling Peter about New Orleans, he sounded less scared and I felt better.
When I heard Hilda and the kids coming downstairs, I took the paper outside and shoved it into the middle of the stack in our Blue Box. Out of sight, out of mind. I made porridge and, for the next half hour, life was normal. The night before, Hilda had volunteered to stay a few days to keep my spirits up during what she called “this trying time.” I turned her down flat, but as I watched her help Taylor braid her hair, I was glad Hilda had overruled me.

When Angus came to the table, it was apparent he hadn’t been listening to the radio. He knocked over the juice, and as he mopped up, he grumbled about a bill that showed he owed Columbia House $72.50 plus handling charges for cassettes and
CDS
.

Taylor, who was turning six on Remembrance Day, chirped away about plans for her birthday. “What I want,” she said, “is a cake like the one Jess had. His mum made it in a flowerpot and there were worms in it.”

Angus emptied about a quarter of a bag of chocolate chips onto his porridge. “You know, T, that’s really gross,” he said.

I took the chocolate chip bag from him. “Speaking of gross …,” I said.

Taylor grinned at her brother. “They’re not real worms. They’re jelly-bellies. On top, Jess’s mum had brown icing and flowers made out of marshmallows. Jo, do you think you could ask her how she did it?”

“Consider it done,” I said.

“Probably we’ll need to make two,” Taylor said thoughtfully. “I have a lot of friends.”

“I’ll ask Jess’s mum to copy out the recipe twice,” I said.

Taylor shook her head. “That’s another one of your jokes, isn’t it, Jo?” She took her cereal bowl to the sink and trotted off upstairs.

Angus leaned towards me. “Am I supposed to be at this party?”

“Only if you expect help paying that $72.50. I hear Columbia House has goons who specialize in shattering kneecaps.”

He flinched. “I’ll be there,” he said, and he stood up and started for the door.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Angus, something happened last night. I think you should take a look at the paper before you go to school.”

I brought the paper in, and as he read it, his eyes widened with concern. “They don’t think you did it, do they?”

“I don’t know what they think,” I said. “But I know I didn’t kill Maureen Gault.” I put my arm around his shoulder. “Angus, this is going to work out. But you’d better prepare yourself for a little weirdness at school.”

“I don’t get it, Mum. Maureen Gault just shows up out of nowhere and all of a sudden she’s dead and they think it’s you. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me, either,” I said. “But Angus, there isn’t any logic here. Whatever else happens, hang on to that. ‘This invites the occult mind,/ Cancels our physics with a sneer.’ ”

He furrowed his brow. “What?”

“Chill out,” I said.

He gave me a small smile. “Yeah,” he said. “And you stay cool, Mum. There’s going to be weirdness coming at you, too.”

He was right. I could hear my 10:30 class buzzing as I came down the hall, but as soon as I stepped into the classroom, there was silence. They seemed to have trouble looking at me, and I remembered a lawyer on
TV
saying he always knew the verdict was guilty if the jury couldn’t make eye contact with the defendant. Some of my colleagues seemed to have a problem with eye contact too. As I passed them in
the hall going back to my office after class, they muttered hello and hurried by.

When I opened my office door, I was glad to see Howard Dowhanuik sitting at my desk. He had shaved and he was wearing a fresh shirt, but he looked like a man who had been up all night. When he saw me, he smiled.

“First friendly face I’ve seen since I got here,” I said.

“That bad?”

“That bad,” I said. “This is a city that reads its morning paper.”

“That’s why they keep the morning paper at a Grade 6 reading level,” Howard said.

“Whatever happened to your reverence for the common man?” I said.

“Man and woman, Jo. I’m surprised at you. And the answer is I don’t have to revere them any more. I’m out of politics.”

“Right,” I said.

Howard looked weary. “Have you got coffee or something?”

“We can go to the Faculty Club,” I said. Then, remembering the ice in the greetings I’d gotten on my way back from class, I said, “On second thought, maybe I’d better make us a pot here.”

I made the coffee and plugged it in. “Howard, before we talk, let me call Taylor’s school. I want to make sure someone’s keeping an eye on how she’s dealing with all this.”

After I talked to Taylor’s principal, I felt better. Taylor was the fourth of my children to go to Lakeview School, and over the years Ian MacDonald and I had come to know each other. He knew that none of the Kilbourns would ever be a Rhodes Scholar, but he also knew that my kids were decent enough, and that he could count on me when he needed an extra driver for a field trip. He said he’d talk to Taylor’s teacher, then he cleared his throat and told me he knew I
wasn’t a murderer and he would make sure that other people knew that, too.

I’d often thought Ian MacDonald was a bit of a taskmaster with the kids, but at the moment he was a hero, and my eyes filled with tears. The tissue box in my desk drawer was empty. All I could find in my purse was a paper napkin with the Dairy Queen logo. I mopped my eyes on it. “Dammit,” I said, “I’m so tired I feel like I’m going to throw up. Howard, how bad is this?”

He sipped his coffee. “At the moment it’s not great, Jo. I was down at the police station after you were there. Gave them my statement, then I just kind of nosed around. I go back a long way with some of those guys.”

“And …?” I said.

“They’ve got a window for the time of death. You found Maureen Gault’s body at 11:15, and the woman who works in the hotel smoke shop remembers seeing Maureen just before 11:00. She was just closing the till when Maureen came in to buy a package of LifeSavers. She said they were for her son.”

For the first time since Maureen died, I felt a pang. “I’d forgotten about him,” I said.

“You had a few things on your mind,” Howard said drily. “You still do, Jo. The cops are still checking people’s stories. Logically enough, I guess, they’re starting with the head table. There are only two of us who haven’t got even a sniff of an alibi. I’m one of them and you’re the other.”

“We should have gotten together,” I said, “told the cops that we spent the hour in Blessed Sacrament praying for the justice system.”

He didn’t laugh. “I wish we had. Gary’s okay. He went over to Tess Malone’s for a nightcap. Jane and Sylvie ended up at Tess’s too.”

“Talk about strange bedfellows,” I said.

Howard shrugged. “Apparently, Sylvie and Tess are tight as ticks. Have been for years. Anyway, the four of them were together until midnight. Craig and Manda went straight home. Their neighbour was out shovelling snow, and they talked to him at about 10:30. Around 11:00 Manda ordered pizza. It was delivered at 11:29. The pizza place they got it from is one of those ‘if we’re late, it’s free’ operations, so they keep pretty good records. Anyway there are some holes in Craig and Manda’s story, but it’s better than …”

“What I have,” I said. “Howard, I don’t understand this. I saw a hundred people when I was looking for Hilda. Doesn’t anybody remember seeing me?”

“Lots of people remember seeing you, but nobody is willing to swear it was between 11:00 and 11:15. Jo, that’s only fifteen minutes. Most people at the dinner had had a couple of drinks by then and, you know how it is, time gets kind of fuzzy.” He looked as tired as I felt. “Do you want me to hang around for a couple of days? My plane leaves in an hour, but I don’t have to be on it. I can get somebody to cover my classes.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Howard. I just need the police to find something. And they will. They have to. For one thing, there has to be a connection with Kevin Tarpley’s murder, and I’m in the clear there.”

“No handgun with your initials on it at the crime scene?” Howard asked.

“No. And I wasn’t anywhere near Prince Albert that day. I have witnesses, too. There was a Hallowe’en party at the art gallery. Taylor and I went to it after her lesson. There must have been thirty-five people there. After that, we picked up Angus and took him downtown to get new basketball shoes. I’ll bet we went to six stores and I’m sure the sales people would remember us. Angus is a difficult customer. Howard,
I could find fifty people to verify that I was in Regina Saturday. That’s probably a world record. Now come on, if we make tracks, I can get you to the airport and still get back for my next class.”

As we drove along the expressway, it was like old times. We talked about politics and Howard’s ongoing courtship of his ex-wife, Marty. Reassuringly ordinary conversation, but when Howard turned to say goodbye to me at the airport, I lost my nerve, and Howard, who had known me for years, saw it happen.

He reached across and covered my hand with his. “Jo, I think you’re right about this thing resolving itself pretty quickly, but until it does, promise me you’ll stay out of it. Whatever’s going on here is ugly. This isn’t a case for Nancy Drew. Go home. Enjoy your family. Teach your classes. Be safe. Trust the cops.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

He shook his head and opened the car door. “Not good enough,” he said, “but a start. I’ll be in touch.”