“Earlier,” I said.
Anne sighed. “And we thought we were virtuous.”
“I have a virtuous dog,” I said.
The comment earned me a smile. “Anyway,” Anne said, “Clare and I started running together. You know how informal those things are. We’d just meet up, do a few stretches, and start. We discovered early on that we were both lawyers. Every so often one of us would have a breakfast meeting, and we agreed to let the other know by e-mail so nobody had to hang around.” Anne’s face clouded. “Last November 11, Clare didn’t show up. It was a holiday; I thought maybe she’d decided to sleep in. I waited for a few minutes, but it looked like rain, so I got in my run, came back here, and checked my e-mail. There was no message.
“That night we had an ice storm, so the next morning I ran at the Y. Same thing the next day, but before I left home I e-mailed Clare asking if she wanted to join me. She didn’t show up, and she didn’t respond to my note. The third day the streets were clear, so I waited for her at the corner of Lorne and Victoria. Another no-show. When I got home, I e-mailed her and asked if she was okay.” Anne took a small sip of her drink. “She answered right away. Clare’s e-mail name was ‘roadrunner.’ I was so relieved to see it pop up on my screen. Her note said that she was in Vancouver. She’d flown out for an interview with an all-female law firm there – her dream. She said she’d let me know if she got the job. A couple of days later she e-mailed to say everything had worked out. The new firm had liked her, she’d liked them, and she was going to start immediately. I sent congratulations and asked her to stay in touch.”
“But Clare didn’t stay in touch,” I said.
“No.” Anne’s eyes were troubled. “To be honest, there was no particular reason why she should have. I hope I haven’t misrepresented our relationship, Joanne. We were just friendly acquaintances. Clare and I ran together, but we didn’t chat a lot. We were both pretty internal people. I think we both saw running as a good way to get centred for the day.”
“Then what’s the problem?” I asked. “The way you’ve explained the situation, everything sounds perfectly normal.”
Anne clenched her fists in frustration. “I know it does. It just doesn’t ring true – at least not to me. Clare wasn’t impulsive. She was methodical. She saw things through. No matter how good the job at the law firm in Vancouver was, she wouldn’t have walked away from Falconer Shreve without clearing off her files.”
“You think something happened at Falconer Shreve to make her want to leave?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that nothing adds up. A few weeks before she moved away, Clare asked me about vacancies here at the Balfour – she was interested in buying a condo, ‘putting down roots,’ to use her term. If anything went wrong at Falconer Shreve, it must have been very sudden and very serious.”
I felt a chill. “And you went to Chris Altieri to ask if he knew why Clare had left so abruptly.”
“Yes. And he was ready with an answer. He corroborated all the information in the e-mail. He said Falconer Shreve had been sorry to lose Clare, but she’d been offered her dream job, so they let her go. He also said the partners found it easier to make the decision because they knew they wouldn’t have any trouble replacing Clare.”
“At least that part is true,” I said. “Falconer Shreve is a hot ticket. Any young lawyer with an ounce of ambition would give her eye teeth to work there.”
“Chris pointed that out, too, and I bought his explanation. We were quite matey. Then just as I was leaving I asked Chris if he could give me the name of the firm Clare was working for. He became flustered. He said he couldn’t remember the name, but if I left him my card, he’d send me the information. He was so anxious to get me out of the office he almost pushed me out the door.”
“And he never got in touch.”
“No, so I started looking elsewhere for information.”
“You were that concerned.”
“Concerned and, to be honest, pissed off. I don’t like being stonewalled. At any rate, I started asking around. The legal community here is a pretty small one, so it wasn’t hard to find people who’d had some contact with Clare. As it turned out, she’d moved to Regina only last spring.”
“And she left Falconer Shreve in November.”
Anne’s nod was emphatic. “The timing is all wrong, isn’t it? How could she move here in April, be happy enough to consider settling permanently in September, and then just leave?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but I felt my nerve ends tingle.
“It didn’t make sense to me either,” Anne said. “And then, towards the end of November, I got an electronic card from Clare, thanking me for being such a good friend.”
“And that didn’t reassure you?”
“It made me even more anxious. None of the women I know would dream of sending an e-card thanking another woman for her friendship, but I went along with the charade. I replied, thanking Clare for the card, but I also asked a question only Clare could answer.”
“You suspected someone other than Clare was using her e-mail address,” I said.
Anne’s eyes met mine. “I knew it,” she said simply. “But I decided before I went to the police to test my theory one more time. Coming up with a question that required intimate knowledge was difficult. Clare and I hadn’t exchanged confidences. Then I remembered that she’d teased me about the laces on my running shoes. They’re Strawberry Shortcake laces.” Anne coloured. “There were these dolls in the early eighties…”
“I remember them,” I said. “My daughter Mieka was a fan.”
Anne’s smile was wan. “Anyway, I e-mailed Clare a note asking her to describe my shoelaces. The e-mail program I use lets me know when my messages have been read, so I know someone opened the e-mail, but there was no response. That’s when I went to the police.”
“And the police didn’t investigate?”
“They said they did.” Anne bit off the words.
“But you didn’t believe them.”
“I believe they went through the motions. The kindest construction is that the detective they sent to investigate was simply out-manoeuvred by the partners at Falconer Shreve. According to the detective I spoke to, events unfolded exactly as Clare’s first note to me said they had. She received the Vancouver offer out of the blue – it was everything she’d ever wanted, so she went for it. Falconer Shreve accepted her resignation reluctantly, but they didn’t want to stand in the way of a woman’s chance at her ‘dream job.’ ” Anne peered at me closely. “The detective used that phrase, too, Joanne. They were all reading from the same script.”
“And you let the matter drop?”
“I was advised to…”
“By whom?”
“By the detective. He said I should drop the case, that people are complex and that sometimes their behaviour is inexplicable.”
“Sounds condescending,” I said.
“The words do,” Anne said. “But if you could have seen his face…” She shook her head, as if to clear the memory. “He seemed to be wrestling with something. At the time I thought his superiors had told him to put a lid on the case, so I tried to psych him out. I told him if the police weren’t going to find Clare Mackey, I would.”
“Did he try to stop you?”
“No. His response was quite bizarre. For the longest time he just stared at me. Finally, he said, ‘Sometimes when the pressures get to be too much, people walk away.’ You know, Joanne, I don’t think he was talking about Clare at all. I think he was talking about himself.”
“It sounds as if he should be reported. Do you remember his name?”
“It was a hard one to forget. He was aboriginal. His name was Alex Kequahtooway.”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t suppose you remember exactly when you talked to him.”
“Oh, but I do,” Anne said. “It was my birthday. November 30.”
I looked down at my hands. They were trembling as if they belonged to a very old lady or a very sick one. November 30 was the date on which Alex had ended our three-year relationship.
I’d planned to drive straight back to the lake, but my conversation with Anne Millar had been a stunner, so I drove home instead. The story of Clare Mackey had been deeply unsettling; it had also opened a Pandora’s box that I’d hoped I’d finally managed to nail shut. I needed time to absorb Anne’s story, but I also needed time to
