buttonholed me.
“Last chance to tell me what’s going on,” she said. “I should warn you that I’m not going to let you leave town until you open up.”
“Mieka…”
“I’ve been your daughter for thirty-one years, remember? I know you. There’s nothing you love more than being with the grandkids, but you breeze in here yesterday, looking like hell, pat the girls on their heads, rip up to the university to see a law professor – no explanation given – then you fall into bed at seven p.m. and sleep for twelve hours.”
“It’s been a lousy week,” I said.
Mieka raised her hand in a halt gesture. “I’m not criticizing you; I’m worrying about you. You’ve been doing all the right things this weekend, but you keep slipping away from us. I know the accident at Lawyers’ Bay must have been a nightmare, but you haven’t brought it up once. There has to be something else.”
I took her hand in mine. She had her father’s hands, long-fingered, slender, and heartbreakingly familiar. The inner walls came tumbling down. Suddenly, the prospect of talking was very appealing. “There is something else,” I said.
“Let’s get some coffee and go out on the deck where it’s cool,” Mieka said. “The upstairs windows are open, so we can hear the girls if they need us.”
We carried out a tray with coffee things, and Mieka touched a match to a votive candle in a small blue metal box that protected it from the wind. Letters were cut out of the metal, and when the candle was lit, the spaces glowed, spelling out the word Harmony. For a few minutes we sat in the comforting half-light, inhaling the heavy sweetness of a July garden and listening to the low voices and bursts of laughter from the guests at a barbecue next door.
Finally, Mieka put down her mug and leaned towards me. “So, what’s going on?” she asked.
“I wish I knew,” I said. “Nothing fits, Mieka. For starters, despite what the media says, Chris Altieri’s ‘accident’ was no accident. It was a suicide, but I was with Chris the night it happened. He’d been through a rough time. A woman he’d been involved with had an abortion, and he’d been depressed about what had happened. But that night he seemed to turn a corner. When we said good night, he asked if he could come for a run with Willie and me the next morning. Two hours later he was dead.”
“Something could have triggered a relapse,” Mieka said. “He might have seen a baby or heard a child’s voice.” She peered at me, checking for a response. “Too melodramatic?”
“No,” I said. “He just seemed to have moved past that. And then at the funeral, a former student of mine who’s now a lawyer herself said she thought there was something very wrong at Falconer Shreve.”
A breeze caught the candle on our table; the letters spelling out Harmony flickered, then disappeared. Mieka didn’t seem to notice.
“Why was this woman talking to you? Why didn’t she go to the police?”
“She did go to the police,” I said. “She told them she was concerned about an acquaintance of hers who left Falconer Shreve suddenly and without explanation. The detective she talked to told her that sometimes people just walk away, and she should forget about it.”
“That’s ridiculous. I hope she reported him or her.”
I took a breath. “Mieka, the detective she talked to was Alex.”
Mieka shook her head vehemently. “I don’t believe that.”
“I didn’t want to believe it either, but it turns out Alex has a Falconer Shreve connection of his own. The new woman in his life is Lily Falconer, the wife of one of the partners.”
My daughter’s face tightened. “A married woman – great. What’s she like?”
“Enigmatic. Angry. Erotic.”
Mieka snorted. “Call me superficial, but I was thinking more along the lines of whether she’s drop-dead gorgeous and has a great bod.”
“No to the first, yes to the second,” I said.
My daughter took a sip of coffee. When she spoke she made no attempt to hide her impatience. “I don’t buy it,” she said. “You and Alex were happy together. He wouldn’t just sniff the air and follow the first woman who put out a scent, no matter how enigmatic, angry, and erotic she was.”
“Lily didn’t just happen along,” I said. “She and Alex have known one another for years. They both grew up on Standing Buffalo.”
“Then it could just be a brother-sister thing.”
“Like Siegmund and Sieglinde?”
“I don’t know who Siegmund and Sieglinde are,” Mieka said. “I’m the one who dropped out of university in first year, remember?”
“I remember,” I said.
“Till your dying day,” Mieka said dryly. “Anyway, Alex wanted out of your relationship. That happens. But the rest of this just doesn’t make sense. Alex wouldn’t get involved with a married woman. And he wouldn’t compromise his job by refusing to talk to someone who came to him with a problem.”
I picked up the pack of matches on the table and relit the harmony candle. It was cold comfort. “We’re dealing with facts here,” I said. “We may not want to believe them, but that doesn’t make them less true.”
“Poor Mum,” Mieka said. “No wonder you looked wiped when you got here. So what are you going to do?”
“Go back to the lake, I guess. See what happens next.”
“Not good enough,” Mieka said. “Be proactive. Talk to Alex.”
“As your Uncle Howard would say, ‘I’d rather be pecked to death by a duck.’ ”
Mieka laughed softly. “Funny, I don’t remember your ever going for the duck option. You’ve always been gutsy about tackling things head-on, and that’s what you should do now. Ask Alex why he blew off that lawyer who tried to tell him something was rotten at Falconer Shreve, and ask him, as nicely as possible of course, if the reason he left you was that he was screwing around with this Lily Falconer.”
“That’d be a memorable conversation,” I said.
“But a productive one.” Mieka stood up. “Clear the air. Find out what you can. Make sure the authorities know everything they need to know, then let them handle it. Mum, Greg and the girls and I are coming up to Lawyers’ Bay for the entire month of August. You’re going to have to be in fighting trim to put up with us till Labour Day.” She stretched. “Bedtime for me,” she said. “And for you.” She lifted my chin and looked at me speculatively. “You know what you need?”
“Do I have a choice about hearing this?”
“The same choice I had when you shared your thoughts about my dropping out of university.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“You need a good all-night date. Put Alex behind you and find a new guy. A little romance will give you back your glow.”
On the drive back to the lake, Taylor continued to be absorbed in the Inukshuk book Mieka had lent her, so the miles sped past in silence. I had plenty of time to consider my daughter’s advice – all of it. Mieka’s counsel to confront Alex was solid. Asking him the hard questions would be painful, and I might not like the answers. Still, it would be better to know. It would be good to learn what I could about Clare from the members of the tightly knit Moot Team, too. If one of the women had been in touch with her in the last eight months, the case was closed, but if none of those closest to Clare had heard from her, we were clearly dealing with a matter for the police. Fiat justitia: I would do what I could to make certain that justice was done, but once I’d got the ball rolling, I was going to step aside and let Anne Millar and Clare’s law-school friends take over. As Mieka had reminded me, August wasn’t far away, and I wanted to be in shape for some serious fun.
Mentally, I had crossed every t and dotted every i, but the sight that greeted me when we pulled up in front of our cottage was fresh proof that when humans make plans, the gods laugh. Noah Wainberg was on his hands and knees on the mat in front of our door. He had a green tool box beside him, and it appeared he was jimmying our lock.
“What’s Isobel’s dad doing?” Taylor asked.
“Only one way to find out,” I said, sliding out of the car and shaking the stiffness out of my legs. “Let’s ask him.”
