The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (23 page)

“Mrs. Kilbourn, this is Mark Evanson. The memorial service for Soren Eames will be held on Thursday at the cap Centre, at ten o’clock in the morning.” He hung up.

“Well,” I said to the empty room, “I can wear the outfit I wore to Andy’s funeral. There’ll be a different crowd for this one.” And then I repeated Howard’s farewell expletive and went back to my files.

I should have been able to predict that Rick would come to Soren Eames’s memorial service. The funeral was the climactic coda of the tragedy of the summer, and as his news director said, Rick did have a unique connection with the story. The prospect of his coming was the one small bright spot in the darkness of that day, especially because he was going to stay with us. It made sense. He hated hotels. The granny flat was self-contained, and except for my files and boxes, it was empty. Despite everything, when I hung up after Rick’s call, I felt my spirits lifting. It had been a while since I’d had something to look forward to, someone to get ready for.

He was due on the late afternoon flight on Wednesday, and I woke up that morning with the sense of anticipation that a day filled with small and pleasant errands brings. It was a grey and misty day, cool and magic. The snow that had fallen the morning of my birthday was gone, and it really seemed like harvest time. After breakfast I drove down to the valley for late summer vegetables: carrots, Brussels sprouts, squash, potatoes. There was a stand near the highway selling fruit from British Columbia, and I bought a basket of Delicious apples for us, then drove back and bought another basket for Rick. I stopped in Lumsden at the one butcher I know who can cut a perfect crown roast of pork and then, on
impulse, I drove to the correctional centre to leave a note for Eve. Even with the extra drive to the correctional centre, I was home well before lunch.

I made a good molassesy Indian pudding, and by the time Angus came home for lunch the house smelled the way a house is supposed to smell in the week before Thanksgiving. Before Angus went back to school, he helped me put sheets on the hide-a-bed in the granny flat and clean towels in the bathroom.

“Now what else?” I asked him, looking around.

“Some of those orange things along the fence in that mug there – a guy would like that.” We filled Ian’s pewter beer mug with Chinese lanterns and dried grass. Angus was right, it did look like the kind of thing a guy would like. When he went to school, I took the phone off the hook, set the table with our best cut-work tablecloth and the good silver, prepared the vegetables, made a quick trip to the liquor store for Rick’s brand of gin, and ran up my bill at the florist’s by buying two pots of fat bronze chrysanthemums and a bunch of creamy cosmos for the Waterford vase Rick had given me. Peter came home from school, filled the wood box and set a fire in the fireplace. I showered, dressed in a dark outfit of clingy silk that made me look glamorous and thin, then changed into a skirt and sweater that made me feel comfortable and drove to the airport to pick up Rick.

I had forgotten how big he was – tall and heavy.
Maclean’s
said he was the only
TV
journalist who was larger than life when you saw him in person. “He doesn’t disappoint” – that’s what the article about him said, and it was right. He certainly didn’t disappoint me that afternoon when I saw him standing by the luggage carousel in our bleak new airport.

He was all in brown, tweed and cashmere and silk. His dark blond hair was freshly barbered, and when he reached
out to embrace me he smelled of good cologne, Scotch from the plane and something else.

“Deli,” he said extending a shiny shopping bag already beginning to darken with grease. “You said you couldn’t get good deli here, so there’s pastrami and salami, and with my luggage, in a box which, in theory, is insulated, there’s a cheesecake from the Red Panzer. Happy Thanksgiving, Joanne.”

It was one of the all-time great evenings. The meal was very good, and afterward we had coffee and brandy and went to Taylor Field to Peter’s football game. Under the lights of the stadium the players in their crayon-bright uniforms looked theatrical and unreal.

“I feel like I’m in the middle of a Debbie Reynolds-Donald O’Connor musical,” Rick said and smiled. His breath was frosty in the fresh, cold air.

“I always feel like that at these things,” I said. “I always find myself hoping I’ll be homecoming queen and get to go to the harvest dance with the captain of the football team.”

“Were you ever homecoming queen?” he asked, looking at me gravely.

“Nope,” I said. “Never went out with the captain of the football team, never even went to a harvest dance.”

“Thank God.” He laughed.

Peter’s team won, and we drove some of the kids home. As they climbed into the car they were exuberant. It was good to drive through the moonlit streets and hear their new deep voices cracking with excitement. At home, the boys went to bed, Rick lit the fire and we sat in front of it drinking tea and brandy and talking about everything and nothing: Mieka’s classes, Margaret Laurence’s novels, why politicians didn’t read more, and finally, when the sounds from upstairs died down and I knew the boys were sleeping,
I told Rick about the relationship between Andy and Soren Eames. He was silent for a long while, then he said quietly, “Those things never end happily,” and stood up. “Time for bed, my homecoming queen.”

I walked out on the deck with him. The sky had cleared, and the night was full of stars, pinpoints of light in the darkness. I had left the lights on in the granny flat, and they glowed warm and inviting across the yard. Rick took both my hands in his and looked down at me.

“Thank you for a perfect night,” he said. Then he walked heavily across the yard. I watched him climb the stairs, watched as he tried the door then shrugged and turned toward me. “Key?” he said.

“Damn,” I said. “Sorry – in the window box – there’s a little plastic bag, taped to the side.”

He reached in, then raised his hand in the darkness. “Triumph,” he said, and he opened the door and disappeared inside.

I stood for a few minutes in the fresh cool air, watching his huge silhouette moving in the square of light from across the yard. Then I called in my dogs, and because I was at peace with the world when we went upstairs, I let them sleep at the bottom of my bed.

The day of Soren Eames’s memorial service was heartbreakingly lovely – a late Indian summer day, all blue skies and hazy autumn light. Rick and I drove to Wolf River right after breakfast. His
TV
crew was taping some background material when we arrived, and he excused himself and went over and talked to them. I was standing in the sunlight, warm in my white suit, when Inspector Millard tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hello, Mrs. Kilbourn.”

“Inspector? I’m surprised to see you here. Did you know Soren Eames?”

He lit a cigarette and shook his head. “No, I’m just kind of looking around.”

“But surely when you have Eve in custody …” My voice trailed off.

“Well, you never know.”

“Never know what?”

He shrugged and started to walk away. “See you in church, Mrs. Kilbourn.” But then he turned. “The other day in my office you said you were writing a book about Andy Boychuk – I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind.”

“No, I haven’t. In fact, I’m more committed than ever. I don’t think Eve Boychuk killed her husband, Inspector, and I don’t think she killed Soren Eames.” It was the first time I’d said the words aloud, and they sounded right.

He took a drag on his cigarette, threw it on the ground and crushed it with his toe. It was only half smoked.

“Mrs. Kilbourn, do your friends, the police, a favour, would you? Exercise prudence in this research of yours.” He pulled a package of Kools out of his breast pocket and took one out. He looked hard at me. “That’s a very attractive suit you have on. The perfect thing for this occasion.” Then he walked off, leaving me standing in the sunlight, speechless in my perfect suit.

I went over to talk to Rick, but he was taping – or almost. Just as I came up, the cameraman signalled Rick to move. “The way the light hits you where you’re standing, it looks like you’ve got the fucking cross burning on the top of your head.”

Rick smiled and shook his head at me, but he moved and started again. As I walked to the entrance of the
CAP
Centre, I could hear Rick’s voice, professionally solemn.

“Six months ago, Soren Eames stood on this spot in triumph. He had personally raised $5.5 million, and the prayer centre behind me had become a reality. He could not have known then that –”

A construction truck went by, blasting its horn. Someone who appeared to be in charge yelled, “Okay, that’s it, close it down while we silence our pal with the Tonka over there.”

Rick gave me a little wave, and I walked over and leaned against a pile of rocks, carefully arranged by size and colour. There was going to be a rock garden outside the chapel. Soren Eames had told me that the day we walked up the hill.

It really was warm. I could feel the sweat start under my arms.

Rick began again. “Six months ago, Soren Eames stood on this spot in triumph.…”

I turned and walked into the cool building.

Soren Eames’s memorial service broke my heart. The administration of the college had brought in a grief counsellor to help the students deal with Soren’s death. She had suggested that they would recover from their loss more quickly if they had a hand in planning the service. It was a sensible recommendation and a terrible one.

Because they were children who had little experience of death, they hadn’t learned the tricks of ceremony and tradition the middle-aged use to mute emotion. After the funeral, Mark Evanson, his young face swollen from crying, told me, “We wanted it to be special for Soren – not something out of a book. We wanted to say good-bye to him in our own voices.” The service was full of touches that collapsed the space between us and our grief. The coffin was covered with a flawless piece of white lace that Soren had brought back with him from Dublin the summer before. Placed carefully
in the centre was a child’s Bible. The president of the student association told us that Soren’s grandfather had brought it to the hospital the day Soren was born.

There was a program. The school choir sang a ragged selection of songs that Soren had liked – some solid gospel hymns but also, surprisingly, two show tunes, “Somewhere” from
West Side Story
and a Stephen Sondheim song called “Not While I’m Around.”

Between selections, students came forward with memories of special moments, special kindnesses. Finally, there was a tape of Soren’s speech at the dedication of the
CAP
Centre. When his voice, full of music and hope, began, the sobbing in that silent room cut straight to the bone. Beside me, Rick Spenser shuddered.

At the end, Lori Evanson, a small figure in black, stepped to the front and in her sweet, tuneful voice sang “Amazing Grace.”

Then her husband came and stood beside her and said very simply, “John 15 will help us now. ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.’ ” And it was over.

Rick and I didn’t find much to say to one another on the drive to the city. I could feel a knot of tension in my shoulders and the beginning of a headache, so I decided to go to the Lakeshore Club for a swim.

When I told Rick, he smiled. “That seems like an inspired idea.”

“Inspired enough for you to join me?”

He looked horrified. “God, no.” Then, seeing my face, he added more kindly, “Do you swim often?”

“Every Saturday morning. We all do. Well, we all do something at the Lakeshore Club. It’s our one invariable routine.”

He smiled. “Routine is comforting, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, “it is. Now where would you like to be taken?”

I dropped him off at his network’s local studio. Then I drove to the Lakeshore Club. An hour later, damp-haired but relaxed, I decided to drive to the correctional centre to see Eve.

The guard, a tall, pretty redhead whose name, according to her identification tag, was Terry Shaw, told me Eve hadn’t talked all day but she seemed “engaged,” so they weren’t concerned. As we turned the corner to the hospital block, Terry Shaw said, “She’s in the craft area doing a little project we got her started on. You can watch her through the glass if you like.”

Eve was sitting at a table near the observation window, bent over, drawing the wattles on the head of a construction-paper turkey. The table was littered with turkeys, and they were cleverly done, proud, handsome birds with bright and malevolent eyes. As she worked, Eve’s thick grey hair fell forward, blocking her face from my eyes. I stood and watched her for a few minutes. When it was time to leave, I tapped on the glass and waved. She looked up at me distractedly, like a woman called from an important task by something foolish. Then, without acknowledging me, she smiled and went back to her turkeys.

Dinner was a casual and comfortable meal. It was warm enough to eat on the deck, so while Rick went to the store for beer, I put a cloth on the table and set out plates of pastrami and salami and trays of bread and mustards and fat kosher dills. Like the man who brought it, the Red Panzer’s cheesecake did not disappoint. It was every bit as good as I remembered.

The train for Winnipeg left early, before 7:00 a.m., so the boys brought our packed suitcases down to the front hall and
we made an early night of it. When I was locking up, I looked over to the granny flat. In the square of light in the darkness I could see Rick Spenser on the telephone. After the jagged emotions of the morning it was a comforting sight.

I had worried that Rick Spenser would feel like an outsider, or worse, put a tear in the seamless intimacy that always sprang up when I was with Ali Sutherland and her husband, Morton Lee. But as soon as Rick walked over, hand outstretched, to greet Ali in the Winnipeg train station, it seemed as if they belonged together. Ali is a big woman, tall, heavy and always brilliantly fashionable. As she and Rick stood under the dome of the old Victorian station, they looked like travellers from a huge and handsome race.