the next provincial election. Clearly, the combination of free food, bad coffee, and a homegrown tragedy was impossible to resist. Stan had made certain that his guests were seated at the picnic tables intended for them. Latecomers had to make do with sitting on the grass. No one – not even the sleek young matrons – seemed to mind. The risk of a grass stain was a small price to pay for inside dope on the tragedy.
I’d planned to help serve the food, but a gaggle of pre-teen girls beat me to the punch. Cheerful as bees, they glided among the tables in their bright summer shorts and tops, offering sandwiches and cookies, teasing and getting teased. I was less merry. Even bologna and mustard on Wonder Bread couldn’t banish the images of the night before. There was something else. Out of deference to my involvement in the tragedy, a sprightly gent with a walker had offered me his place at the picnic table nearest Stan and his friends. Eavesdropping was unavoidable, and what I heard did not improve my mood. The situation was as sizzling as the day, and as they hosed one another down with their theories, Stan Gardiner and his friends were gleeful.
Stan himself opened the discussion. “A lot goes on down there at Lawyers’ Bay that they don’t want people to know about. Why else would they have put up them gates out front?”
The question may have been rhetorical, but that didn’t stop the man on Stan’s left. After a meditative pull on his Player’s Plain, he floated an answer. “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll – that’s what they’re into.” He sucked back another lungful, cackled himself into a coughing fit, wiped his mouth smartly on his hanky, and continued. “Key parties, wife swapping, cocaine – they do it all.”
The man across from him made a moue of disgust. “Jesus, Morris, if you don’t cut out cigarettes, they’re gonna kill you.”
“I’m eighty-five, George,” the smoker said reasonably. “Something’s going to kill me.”
“Better sooner than later,” George said. “When you spew garbage like that about a decent man you make me impatient. That Chris Altieri was a nice young fella. When he was at the lake, he used to drive into town to Mass every day – real religious.”
Morris was unconvinced. “You don’t go to church every goddamned day unless you’ve done something wrong. If that Altieri guy was such a choirboy, why was that Indian cop sniffin’ around here all winter?”
George was judicious. “A cop isn’t just a cop. He’s a man, too. And a man can have reasons to sniff around that don’t have anything to do with his job.”
“I get your meaning,” Morris said.
“So do I,” Stan Gardiner said. “And enough’s enough. There are women and children around. One thing I know, nobody sniffed around when Harriet Hynd was alive. She was a lady through and through, and Russell Hynd was a gentleman. No gates on the bay in their time.”
Coffee Row was still on full perk when I left. My cottage, empty of children and responsibilities, was mercifully stimulant free, and I welcomed the tranquillity. I was bone-tired, and I needed to be alone. As they always seemed to, the members of the Winners’ Circle had anticipated my needs. Taylor was one of the delights of my life, but that day I was relieved that Rose Lavallee had taken my daughter under her wing. Rose was so tiny that she could have bought her clothes in the pre-teen department at the Bay, but there was no doubting her common sense and reliability. I made myself a cup of Earl Grey, picked up Harriet’s copy of To the Lighthouse, and read until the mid-afternoon shadows danced across the ceiling. By the time the kitchen clock struck three, I had wearied of the grace with which Mrs. Ramsay presided over the seashells, bird skulls, and conflicting needs of her sons, daughters, and friends. I wanted a protagonist in my own image, a woman who was grateful none of her kids were around to watch her sulk over an old lover who apparently had wasted no time before he began sniffing around for a shiny new replacement after he’d dumped her.
Annoyed by my self-pity, I put Mrs. Ramsay back on the shelf and went to the kitchen to check out the possibilities for dinner. Rose was bringing Taylor home at three-thirty. Knowing my daughter, she’d be keen for a swim. If I got dinner started, she and I could take our time at the beach.
I might have been unlucky in love, but I was lucky in the kitchen. I’d been at the farmers’ market the day before and picked up a basket of tomatoes, some fresh basil, and a block of Taylor’s favourite white cheddar. I had a loaf of wild-rice bread in the freezer. Taylor loved smoked tomato soup. A mug of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich would be just the ticket after we came back from the lake.
I’d just finished chiffonading the basil when Rose and the girls came in. Isobel Wainberg was carrying a Zellers bag from which only the tips of her knitting needles protruded, but Taylor and Gracie were waving their handiwork like flags.
“Look at this,” Taylor said, shoving six inches of a hyacinth scarf towards me. “Isn’t this great? The very first thing I ever knitted. Rose’s sister, Betty, says I took to it like a duck to water.”
Gracie swung her creation from side to side. Her knitting, large-looped and irregular, flopped dispiritedly. She laughed. “Betty says I have many other talents.”
“You do,” Isobel said loyally. “You don’t always worry about doing everything perfectly. That’s a talent.”
“And,” Taylor added, “you can shoot hoops better than Angus. Now, who wants to eat?”
The girls raced to the kitchen, leaving Rose and me behind. “Can I get you something?” I asked. “Some tea or a cold drink?”
Rose looked critically at a loose button on her sundress. “I appreciate the thought,” she said, “but you don’t have to entertain me. I’m happy just to sit.”
“Me too,” I said. “And thanks to you, I got to sit all afternoon. Taylor obviously had a great time.”
Rose snapped off the errant button. “I’ll take care of you when I get home,” she said, popping the button in her pocket. She turned her attention to me. “That girl of yours surprised me today,” she said. “She’s a free spirit, and free spirits are hard to rein in – not that you want to. All the same, it makes it easier for everybody when they find something that they like to do. Your girl really concentrated on her knitting. She’s got an idea that she wants to knit a bedcover made of squares. She drew what she wanted so Betty could help her with the patterns. They were interesting – all different kinds of fish and shells. Your girl has a knack.”
“Taylor’s birth mother was an artist,” I said. “Her name was Sally Love. She was brilliant, and when we were growing up, she was my closest friend. After she died, I adopted Taylor.”
“So the gift was passed down. It isn’t always,” Rose said. She picked up the knitting that Gracie Falconer had abandoned and smiled at the loose, loopy stitches. “You can tell a lot about a person by the way she knits. I taught this one’s mother. From the first day, she never dropped a stitch. She never has.”
We were silent, listening to the laughter drift from the other room. “So you’ve known Lily for a long time.”
“All her life,” Rose said. “We’re from the same reserve.”
“And Alex Kequahtooway?”
Rose’s jaw tightened. “I know him,” she said.
“Were he and Lily friends when she was growing up?”
“On a reserve everybody knows everybody,” Rose said. Her mouth snapped shut like a coin purse. Clearly there’d be no more revelations coming my way today. “Remember that old saying, ‘Curiosity killed the cat’?” she said.
“My grandmother used to tell me that when I was sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong.”
“Well, I’m saying it to you now.” Rose picked up Gracie’s knitting and Isobel’s Zellers bag. “Thanks for the visit. It’s good to get to know new people.”
CHAPTER
3
In the days before the funeral, the partners of Falconer Shreve stayed at the lake, grieving, planning, and cleaving to one another. It was rare to see any of them alone. The weather had turned hot, and Lawyers’ Bay was enveloped by a kind of hazy unease as we waited for the heat to break and for the funeral that would rescue us from the limbo into which Chris Altieri’s death had banished us. Life went on, but there was sadness in the summer air. There was also uncertainty. The police hadn’t yet ruled out the possibility that Chris’s death had been an accident; however, their search for a suicide note had proved fruitless. Without a Rosetta stone to unlock the
