The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (2 page)

“You saw the news report,” he said.

I nodded.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I will be,” I said.

“This is all wrong, Jo,” he said. “You and Ian were so close. Julie always called you ‘the legendary couple.’ ”

I didn’t know what to say. Craig and his first wife, Julie, had been a legendary couple, too. Craig was the most uxorious of men, but Julie was poison. Before she had surprised everyone by divorcing him two years earlier, she had come close to destroying Craig’s life. The day the divorce was final, it was Craig’s turn for surprises. He resigned his seat in the Legislature and married one of his constituents, a twenty-five-year-old midwife named Manda Traynor, who had come to Craig’s office asking him for help in organizing a campaign to legalize midwifery. Now Manda was expecting their first child, and as Craig stood holding my hand, it was obvious that it was his new wife who filled his thoughts.

“I’m just beginning to understand what you lost when you lost Ian,” Craig said simply. “If anything were to happen to Manda …” His voice trailed off.

The woman standing behind Craig grunted with annoyance. Tess Malone looked exactly as she had on the day she’d been elected twenty years earlier: her hair was still a helmet of honey curls; the lines of her corsetted body were still bullet smooth. She looked impenetrable, like a woman who woke up every morning and prepared herself for combat. It was not a fanciful image. Tess’s life was a battle.

She had run for office four times, and she had won four times. Her slogan was always the same:
TRUST TESS
. To an outsider, the words seemed sentimental and empty, but Tess’s supporters knew the slogan was a covenant. The people who voted for Tess knew that they could trust her to be at their daughters’ weddings, their babies’ christenings, and their grandparents’ funerals. They knew that Tess would be their champion if they needed to get their mother
an appointment at the Chiropody Clinic, their son into drug rehabilitation, or their wife’s resumé into the hands of a bureaucrat who might actually read it.

There was one other matter on which friend and foe alike knew they could trust Tess. Everyone who knew Tess Malone knew she would fight the right to an abortion till the day she drew her last breath. Ian had liked and admired her, but when he had been attorney general, he and Tess had fought bitterly about our government’s policy on reproductive choice; after we lost, they still spent hours quarrelling over what he called Tess’s life-long love affair with the foetus. The month after he died, Tess resigned her seat in the house to devote herself full time to a pro-life organization called Beating Heart. She said she quit politics because she was frustrated at our party’s refusal to change its stand on abortion. I always thought she just missed her old sparring partner. As she stood looking up into Craig Evanson’s face, speaking in the rasp of an unrepentant two-pack-a-day smoker, I felt a surge of affection.

“Don’t be an ass, Craig,” she said. “And don’t chase trouble. As Jo can tell you, trouble finds you soon enough. You don’t have to send up flares.”

Tess turned to me. Rhinestone flowers bloomed on the frames of her glasses, but the eyes behind the thick lenses were clever and kind.

“What can I do to help, Jo? One thought … I’m sure you already have your talk for Howard’s dinner organized, but if you don’t feel like standing in front of a room full of people, I could be the emcee …”

Jane O’Keefe, the other woman in the group, raked her fingers through her short blond hair. “Not while I’m capable of rational thought,” she said. Jane was an M.D., and the past summer she and three other doctors had opened a Women’s Health Centre in which abortions were performed. There had
been some ugly reactions in the community, and Tess had fanned the flames. She’d been on every talk show in town denouncing the Women’s Centre and the women who staffed it.

“Gary can do it,” Jane said. She turned and looked out the door towards the parking lot. “If he ever shows up, that is.”

Tess moved towards her, “Jane, you yourself said …”

“I know what I said. I said I wanted a woman to emcee Howard’s dinner, but if Jo backs out, you and I are the women, and I don’t want you and you don’t want me. That leaves Gary and Craig, and Craig is a lousy public speaker.”

Craig made a little bow in Jane’s direction. “Thank you, Jane.”

Oblivious, Jane sailed on. “Don’t be touchy, Craig. You’re capable of keeping your pants zipped, which is more than I can say for my brother-in-law.”

Right on cue, Jane O’Keefe’s brother-in-law burst through the door of Nationtv.

In the women’s magazines of the fifties there were love stories with heroes whose physical characteristics were as formulaic as those of a knight in medieval romance. With their rangy bodies and rugged features, they leapt off the pages into our female hearts. Gary Stephens had those kind of good looks, and once upon a time he had been a hero, at least to me. When I knew him first, Gary was a reformer out to transform the political landscape. Then, he changed.

It seemed to happen overnight. One day he just stopped fighting the good fight and became a jerk and a womanizer. The political world is fuelled by gossip, and for a while there was hot speculation about Gary, but the explanation most of us finally accepted was supplied by his sister-in-law. Jane O’Keefe said that, in her opinion, Gary simply lost his death struggle with the id. Whatever had happened, Gary Stephens wasn’t a hero anymore, at least not in my books.

“Apologies for being late,” he said. “I was …”

Jane smiled at him. “We understand, Gary. Everyone knows it takes a man longer after he hits forty.”

Gary shrugged. “For the record, I was with a client.” He turned towards me. “I heard about Kevin Tarpley on the radio coming over here. I’m sorry, babe. All those painful memories, and Ian was the best.”

“I always thought so,” I said, and I could hear the ice in my voice.

Jane O’Keefe looked at her watch. “We should get inside. Considering that not one of us was on time today, I don’t think we should risk re-rescheduling.” She touched my arm. “It was good to see you again, Jo. Hang in there.”

Gary leaned forward, gave me a practised one-armed hug and kissed my cheek. The others said goodbye and headed towards the elevators. As the doors closed behind them, I reached up and brushed the place that Gary Stephens’s lips had touched.

“Why would he kiss me?” I said to Jill.

She shrugged. “ ‘Man sees the deed, but God sees the intention.’ ”

“That’s a comforting thought,” I said.

“Thomas Aquinas was a comforting kind of guy,” Jill said. “You’d know these things too, if you’d had the benefit of a Catholic education.”

When we stepped through the big glass doors into the night, Jill breathed deeply. The air smelled of wet leaves and wood smoke.

“Hallowe’en,” she said, hugging herself against the cold. “Good times.”

She grinned at me, and the years melted away. She was the shining-eyed redhead I’d met twenty years before when she showed up unannounced at Ian’s office the day she graduated from the School of Journalism. She had handed him her
brand new diploma and said, “My name is Jill Osiowy, and I want to make a difference.” Ian always said he hadn’t known whether to hire her or have her committed.

“I’m glad Ian didn’t have you committed,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “You’d better get back inside. It’s freezing out here. Call me if you hear anything more about Kevin Tarpley.”

When I pulled up in front of my house on Regina Avenue, Taylor and Jess Stephens were on the front porch supervising as my friend, Hilda McCourt, lit the candle in our pumpkin. Jess was Gary’s son, and he and Taylor had been friends since the first day of Grade 1 when they discovered they could both roll their eyes back in their heads so the pupils seemed to disappear.

Jess was dressed as a magician, Taylor was in her butterfly costume, and Hilda was wearing black tights, a black turtleneck, silver rings on every finger and, around her neck, a silver chain with a jewelled crescent moon pendant. Her brilliant red hair was fuzzed out in a halo around her handsome face. Hilda was past eighty and counting, but she could still turn heads, and she knew it.

When she saw me coming up the walk, she called out. “Wait, I’ll turn on the porch light for you. We had it off so the lighting of the pumpkin would be more dramatic.”

“Don’t spoil the effect,” I said. “I don’t need a light.”

Jess waved at me.

“My mum’s sick, and my dad’s doing something. Taylor said I could come Hallowe’ening with you. Can I?”

“Sure,” I said. “Go call your mum.”

He grinned. I could see the space where his front teeth were missing. “I already did,” he said. “My dad’s gonna pick me up when we’re through.”

“Good enough,” I said.

Taylor was looking at the face of the jack o’lantern, mesmerized. “Blissed out” her brother, Angus, would have said. I knelt down beside her. “T, I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got hung up with something at the station.”

“I saw the news,” Hilda said quietly.

I looked up at her. “Did the kids?”

Hilda shook her head. “No, Angus was in his room trying to decide what to wear to his dance, and tonight Taylor’s concerns appear to stop at her wingtips.” She leaned towards me. “How are you bearing up?”

“I think trailing along behind these guys with twenty pounds of candy in a pillowcase might be just what I need.”

“In that case,” said Hilda, “we’ll continue with the ceremony here. I was just going to tell the magician and the butterfly the story of Jack O’Lantern.”

I stood in the doorway and listened as Hilda told the kids the story of a man named Jack who was so mischievous that the devil wouldn’t let him into hell because he was afraid Jack would trick him.

Hilda’s voice was sombre as she finished. “And so, when Jack learned he’d have to roam the earth forever, he stole a burning coal from the underworld and placed it inside a turnip to light his way.”

Jess looked puzzled. “Why didn’t Jack use a pumpkin?” he asked.

“Because this was long ago, in Ireland, and they didn’t have pumpkins,” Hilda said.

Taylor shook her head. “Poor Jack. Carving that turnip must have taken him about twenty hours.”

I touched Taylor’s shoulder. “I’m going to go upstairs and check on your brother. You and Jess go in and have one last pee, and then we’ll hit the streets. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, “that’ll be okay.” She dropped to her knees and leaned forward so that her eyes were looking into the bright triangular eyes of the jack o’lantern. “How did Jack keep the coal lit?” she asked.

I went inside, glad it was Hilda who had to come up with an answer.

Angus was standing in the middle of his room. There were clothes thrown everywhere, but he wasn’t wearing anything except a pair of boxer shorts with pigs on them.

When he saw me, he exploded. “The guys are coming by in twenty minutes and I haven’t figured out a costume. Everything I try makes me look totally stupid.”

“I guess this isn’t the time for me to suggest that you should have started planning your costume sooner,” I said.

He looked exasperated. “Mum, just give me a little help here … Please.”

At fifteen, Angus had Ian’s dark good looks. He had grown about a foot in the last six months. I looked at him and remembered.

“I have an idea,” I said.

I went down into the basement and pulled out a trunk in which, against all the advice in the books for widows, I had kept some of Ian’s things. I’d filled the trunk a month to the day after Ian died, but until that Hallowe’en night I hadn’t had the heart to open it.

Under a pile of sweaters, I found what I was looking for: an old herringbone cape with a matching Sherlock Holmes hat and a walking stick. I took them back upstairs and handed them to my son.

“Do you remember this outfit?” I asked. “Daddy wore it every Hallowe’en.”

Angus had put on a pair of jeans and a turtleneck. He threw the cape around his shoulders and pulled the cap over
his dark hair. He looked so much like Ian I could feel my throat close.

“Well?” I said.

He looked at himself in the full-length mirror on his cupboard door.

“Pretty good,” he said. Then his reflection in the mirror grinned at me. “Actually, Mum, the cape really rocks hard. Thanks.” He started for the door.

“Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you going to clean up this mess?”

“Later,” he said. “Chill out, Mum. It’s a night to party.”

When he left, the smell of the cape lingered, potent as memory. I swallowed hard and went downstairs to get my daughter and her friend.

It was a great night for Hallowe’ening. There was a three-quarter moon, and, for Taylor and Jess, every street held a surprise: doors opened by snaggle-toothed vampires and mummies swathed in white; stepladders with glowing pumpkins on every step; and on the corner of McCallum and Albert, a witch cackling in front of the cauldron that had smoked with dry ice every Hallowe’en since Angus was a baby.

When we turned onto Regina Avenue, Gary Stephens was pulling up in front of our house.

“Perfect timing,” I said, as he got out of the car.

“Right,” he said absently.

And then Jess ran to him, holding out his pillowcase. “Dad, look at all the stuff I got.”

As he knelt beside his son, Gary’s face was transformed. His charm with women might have been as false as the proverbial harlot’s oath, but Gary Stephens’s love for his son was the real thing. It wasn’t hard to get warmth in my voice when I said goodnight.

Taylor went straight to the dining room and dumped all her candy on the table, checking for razor blades the way her
Grade 1 teacher had instructed her to. She pulled up a chair and began to arrange the candy in categories: things she liked and things she didn’t like. Then she tried new categories: chocolate bars, gum, candy kisses, gross stuff. Finally, she lay her head down on her arms.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s it. Time for this butterfly to fold her wings.”

I took her upstairs, scrubbed off her butterfly makeup, and tucked her in. When I came back, Hilda was sitting in a rocker beside the fireplace. A fire was blazing in the grate, and on the low table in front of Hilda, there was a tray with two glasses, a bottle of Jameson’s, and a round loaf of fruit bread.