Kaleidoscope (35 page)

After we’d had dessert, Zack’s gaze travelled around the table. “We’ve been putting this off, but it’s time for an update. Debbie Haczkewicz says word on the street is that someone with serious money hired a member of Red Rage to kill Leland.”

Declan broke the silence. “Why would anyone do that?” he said, and his voice cracked.

Zack’s eyes sought mine. “Too soon to know,” Zack said. “Declan, it’s too soon to know if the rumour is even true. Debbie’s checking it out, and she’s talking to everyone who might have had a motive. Declan, I’m afraid that includes your mother.”

Taylor moved closer to Declan and threaded her arm through his. He shot her a grateful look and breathed deeply. “Yeah. I can see why,” he said, and his acceptance of the unthinkable tore at my heart.

Margot’s face was a mask. “Anything else?”

“Nothing definite,” Zack said. “But it’s early times.”

“I’m glad you waited till we were through eating to spring this on us,” Margot said dryly.

“Timing is everything,” Zack said. Suddenly, his composure broke. “Jesus, Margot, I wish this wasn’t happening.”

“Me, too,” she said.

Steve stood up. “I’m going to exercise my authority as brother-in-law and take Margot home. She’s had enough for one day.” He turned to Declan. “I think you have, too.”

As we said our goodbyes at the door, Taylor hugged Declan for a long time, and when he turned to go, she went straight upstairs to her room with a quiet “Goodnight.”

I’d just started emptying the dishwasher when I heard Zack’s cell ring in the living room. It was a long conversation. By the time he joined me in the kitchen, I’d finished setting the table for breakfast. Without asking, Zack poured us each some cognac. I watched his face as he handed one of snifters to me.

“Bad news?” I asked.

“The worst,” Zack said. “That was Debbie. Sage Mackenzie just left police headquarters. The cops are on their way to talk to Louise.”

“Sage has evidence that Louise was involved in Leland’s murder?”

“Nothing concrete, but enough circumstantial evidence to raise questions. Sage still has friends on the force, so she’s been following the Hunter case. Today she found out that the cops were investigating the possibility that someone in Red Rage had been paid to kill Leland, and apparently that triggered a memory.

“On Canada Day, Louise passed out after dinner and when Sage was getting her ready for bed, she saw a stack of cash in Louise’s lingerie drawer. Louise has a thing about credit cards. I remember cautioning her about keeping large amount of cash in the house, but she never listened. Anyway, after Louise was asleep, Sage counted the money. There was $15,000 in the drawer.”

“Wow.”

“Wow, indeed,” Zack said. “$15,000 is a substantial stash for incidentals, but Sage didn’t say anything because as far
as she was concerned there was no reason to. It was Louise’s money, and she could do what she wanted with it.

“But today when Sage heard about the possibility that Leland’s death was a paid hit by Red Rage, she was concerned enough to check out the lingerie drawer. The money was gone. When Sage asked Louise about it, Louise was defensive and hostile.”

“So Sage went to the police.”

“Not immediately. She apparently has real affection for Louise, so she struggled with her decision. Finally, Sage decided to be guided by her conscience. As a lawyer, she’s an officer of the court. She has an ethical duty to tell the truth.”

“So it’s only a matter of time before they arrest Louise?”

“Sage thinks so. She’s already called Sandra Mikalonis to represent Louise.”

“This is so terrible,” I said. “Are you going to tell Margot tonight?”

“No,” Zack said. “Let her get some sleep. This is going to crush Declan, but maybe if I have a night to think about it, I’ll come up with a way to cushion the blow.”

“You’re taking on too much,” I said. “I love you, Zack. Last Christmas I was afraid I was going to lose you. I don’t want that to happen again.”

Zack swirled his cognac. “Neither do I, but what’s that old saying about how we don’t know how strong we are until being strong is the only option? We do what we have to do.”

CHAPTER
19

The next morning as Zack dressed for the meeting with the Peyben board, he was sanguine. He and Sandra Mikalonis had talked earlier. The police had cautioned Louise to remain in the city, but they hadn’t arrested her, so Zack had been able to present Margot and Declan with a best-case scenario. Margot was a shrewd enough lawyer to know that every best-case scenario has a flip side, but she hadn’t pushed it.

When Zack left to pick up Margot and Declan, I walked across the hall with him so I could wish them luck. Zack felt they were on solid ground with the board. The initial meeting had been a feeling-out process. Now that everyone knew where they stood, Zack was optimistic that the board would support Margot and they could all get on with the business of running the company.

In less than an hour, Zack, Margot, and Declan were back in our condo and they were clearly gobsmacked.

“That was quick,” I said.

Declan ran his hand through his dreads. “I’m still not quite sure what happened.”

Zack shrugged. “Your stepmother showed that she has the makings of a first-rate poker player.”

“Is anyone going to fill me in?” I said.

“Sure,” Zack said. “The story is short and sweet. We walked into the boardroom at Falconer Shreve. The members of the Peyben board were sitting around the table looking as if they owned the place. Their chair stood up and announced that he was prepared to take on the role of
CEO
of Peyben and if Margot didn’t agree to his appointment, the board would resign en masse. Margot didn’t blink.”

I turned to her. “So what did you do?”

“I said, ‘Resignations accepted all around,’ and then I said, ‘Peyben thanks you for your service. Now get out.’ ”

“And they did?”

“Oh yeah,” Zack said. “They got out, and when they left, smoke was coming out of their ears.”

I laughed. “So you’ll be looking for new board members.”

“Blake’s already drawing up a list of prospects,” Margot said. “I actually feel pretty good about this.”

“So do I,” Declan said. “Those guys creeped me out.”

Later that day, I drove to a shop that specialized in custom-printing T-shirts. I ordered three: one each for Zack, Margot, and Declan. On the front of each shirt were the words
Being Strong is the Only Option
.

Margot and Declan wore their shirts till the day of Leland’s funeral.

Knowing that Leland’s funeral would be emotionally gruelling, Zack, Taylor, and I planned a morning that would keep our family near Margot if she needed us but would give us a chance to recharge. The three of us had a long swim, then Taylor went to work in her studio, and Zack and I took tea and an armload of our condo’s never-ending supply of magazines
up to the roof garden, kicked back, and waited for sunshine and peace to work their magic.

As a rule, Zack did not handle leisure well. After five minutes exclaiming over the joy of doing nothing, he always found something to do. That morning, as he flipped through
Sports Illustrated
, reading aloud items he was certain would be of interest to me, I found myself taking a hard look at my dream of getting Zack to retire early. He had just finished giving me a précis of the high school careers of the some of the most promising new U.S. college quarterbacks when he took out his BlackBerry and began returning calls. I did not discourage him.

For an hour Zack contentedly thumbed responses and chatted away while I read
New Yorker
articles on how the dog became our master and how Thomas Hardy’s reputation as God’s undertaker still made him the most relevant of early twentieth-century authors.

By the time Zack had finished his calls, and I’d ordered the e-book of
Jude the Obscure
, we were hot and hungry. As we stepped out of the elevator, my phone rang, and Zack mouthed that he was going to check on Margot and Declan.

It was Norine. She must have been swamped with details about the funeral, but as always, she sounded in command. “Everything appears to be under control. Of course, appearance isn’t reality.”

I laughed. “Actually, with you, it generally is. Anyway, let me know if you need a hand.”

“I will. But that isn’t why I called. Joanne, I’ve been delving into the history of that strange file of clippings about your late husband’s life. Patrick Hawley, the young man who found it, says there’s a companion file. I told him to courier it directly to you from the Calgary office.”

“Did Patrick say what was in the file?”

“No, and I didn’t ask. But given everything that’s happened, I think you should take it to the police.”

“Given everything that’s happened,” I said, “I think you’re right.”

At Margot’s request, we dressed for the funeral as we would for a summer gathering. As we turned onto the university campus, I knew that in suggesting comfortable clothing in light fabrics and pastels, Margot had chosen wisely. Those coming together to honour Leland would be dressed to remember, not mourn.

In midsummer, a university campus can be Arcadia. The lawns are lush, the trees are in full leaf, the flowerbeds are brilliant, and the tanned, leggy students, their lives bursting into bloom in the summer heat, are more handsome then they will ever be again. Sublime. But on that hot July day, we were on campus for the funeral of a good man, and the beauty of our surroundings bruised my heart.

Zack and Taylor and I were early for the service. The partners at Falconer Shreve had decided to accompany Margot and Declan as they walked up the aisle to take their seats. A young woman from the funeral home asked us to sign the guestbook, and after we had signed, she directed us to the room where Margot, Declan, and the partners would assemble. I wanted to be alone for a while, so I told Zack and Taylor to go ahead without me and I’d meet them in the chapel.

The Luther College chapel was a space designed to welcome students. The windows looked out onto the campus, the maple pews were arranged in semicircles that faced a simple altar, and bright pillows, large enough for students to sit on, were stacked in the room’s corners. I found a place in the second row with space beside me for Zack’s
wheelchair, said a prayer for Leland and his family, and then repeated the mantra which had sustained me since Zack and I had looked at the rubble that had once been our home: “This too shall pass.”

In the small hours I wondered whether the words were more comforting than true, but I clung to them, and finally, it seemed that the worst was almost over. The next day we were going to Lawyers’ Bay, and we would be there until September. At the beginning I had believed that once we were at the lake, our lives would resume their old, comfortable rhythm, but too much had happened. The lake would be the same, but we had been changed. We had all paid in hard coin for what we had learned since the bombing of our house, but we’d made it through, and I was grateful.

There had been unfathomable losses, but there had also been gains. Blake Falconer was assembling a Peyben board that would accept the fact that the Village Project’s priority was to give the men and women of North Central the background, training, and experience necessary for a decent life. Riel was proving to be an effective ally for Margot, and Zack had become one of his staunchest supporters. Even Declan, grieving the loss of his father, had begun to take quiet pride in the role he was playing in Margot’s life. We had been wounded, but we would survive.

Louise, though, was a question mark. She had gone into seclusion, refusing to see anyone, including her son. Sage was with her 24/7, and she gave us regular and increasingly distressing reports of Louise’s disintegration. There was one bright spot. Louise was not planning to attend the funeral.

When Norine notified Leland’s out-of-province/out-of-country business associates about the funeral plans, she told them that Margot’s preference was for a funeral that was small and private. In the past week, these associates had deluged Margot with towering flower arrangements and
extravagant food baskets, but as the chapel began to fill, it was apparent that they had taken Norine at her word.

There weren’t many faces in the chapel that I didn’t recognize. Laurie and Steve and their five children sat with Margot and Laurie’s tall blond brothers and their families. The women with whom Margot had celebrated her upcoming marriage on that idyllic evening beneath Linda Fritz’s cottonwood tree were all there. Henry Chan, who was Margot’s doctor, as well as ours, and his wife, Gina Brown, were sitting near the back. Many of Margot’s Wadena friends whom I recognized from the wedding had come to offer condolences. As Margot had requested, no one had chosen the traditional colours of mourning.

“How’s Declan doing?” I asked as I sat down next to Taylor.

“Not great,” she said. “But okay.”

Ed and Barry came in soon after, and when they spotted us, they came over.

“Is there room for us?” Ed asked.

“Always,” I said. “And see if you can save places for Mieka and her family. They seem to be running late.”

Barry smiled. “I imagine a fashionista like Lena takes a while to pull her look together.”

“She does indeed,” I said.

When Mieka and the girls arrived, Riel wasn’t with them. I leaned close to Mieka and whispered, “Where’s Riel?”

“He’s doing something during the ceremony,” she said. “He just wanted to check out the timing with Margot.”

“I’m glad he’s here.” I looked down the pew at the girls and Barry and Ed and my eyes welled. “I’m glad you’re all here.”

Riel joined us just as the ceremony started. A pianist and a soprano, whom the bulletin identified as students at the conservatory, performed Leonard Bernstein’s “A Simple Song” and then Declan, Margot, and her law partners moved up the aisle in silence and took their places. Margot was
wearing a draped jersey dress the colour of sea spray and her blonde hair fell smoothly to her shoulders. Her face was drawn, but she was composed. She was carrying the carved box that held Leland’s ashes, and when she placed the box on the altar, her hand lingered on it for a long moment.