then handed the receiver to me. It was my old friend Hilda McCourt, calling to say she was proud of Taylor and worried about Charlie. The third phone call was from Ed Mariani, who was also proud and worried. By the time the fourth call came, my Sloppy Joe was lukewarm and soggy and I’d had enough interruptions.
“Leave it,” I shouted, but Taylor had already answered. She held out the phone to me.
“For you,” she said brightly.
It took me a moment to identify the voice on the other end. Bebe Morrissey was a woman who didn’t waste time on preamble, and obviously she worked on the assumption that once you’d met her, you wouldn’t forget her.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Bebe, can I call you back? We’re just in the middle of dinner.”
“Don’t put me off,” she said. “This is important. On the news tonight, that little kid with the drawing was your daughter, right?”
“Right,” I said. “But why is that important?”
“I’m ninety-five years old, and I need to make sure I’ve got everybody straight in my mind,” she said irritably. “Now, the bottle blonde who gave your kid the flag and the pin was that right-winger, Bev Pilon.”
I smiled to myself. “Right,” I said.
“And the other one, the pasty-faced one, was – hang on, I wrote it down – Livia Brook, head of the department of Political Science.”
“Right again. Look, Bebe, I don’t mean to be rude, but my dinner is stone cold. Why don’t you let me nuke it, eat it, and call you back?”
“Because I live with a silent killer, high blood pressure, and by the time you call back, I could be dead. Now listen, I’ve made a serious mistake. Remember when I told you I saw Ariel Warren having that fight with her mother?”
“I remember,” I said; then, in an attempt to speed her along, I provided Bebe with a quick recap of the incident. “After Ariel said that she had to do what she thought was best because she only had one life, her mother said, ‘You have two lives because I gave you mine.’ You and I agreed that it was a pretty ugly thing to say to your own flesh and blood.”
Bebe cackled triumphantly. “Except – and this is my point – the woman who said that wasn’t Ariel’s flesh and blood. It was the other one, with the pasty face.”
“Livia?” I asked.
“Yes,” Bebe said, “Livia Brook, head of the department of Political Science. She was the one who told Ariel that she’d given her her life.”
The pieces of the puzzle rearranged themselves, falling into place to reveal a truth that was as ugly as it was inescapable. Livia had been the woman Ariel had feared, the woman who, while insisting that all she wanted was Ariel’s happiness, had been unable to accept Ariel’s choice of a life that didn’t include her. Livia was the woman who had done “terrible things.” Unbidden, a memory surged into my consciousness: Ann Vogel in the Political Science office bragging about her role in getting Solange her job. Ann had said, “What Livia and I did wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary,” and Livia had silenced her. At the time, I had believed Livia was trying to put an end to a quarrel; now, it was clear that her motivation was far from altruistic. She had, I realized, been trying to shut Ann down before she said too much.
For a beat, shock froze me. Then I felt the lash of panic. This wasn’t over. Solange wouldn’t let it be over until she found the woman Ariel had feared. The fact that Solange had been looking for Maryse Bergman suggested that the pieces of the puzzle were coming together for her, too.
By now, I knew Solange’s home and office numbers by heart. When there was no answer at either place, I grabbed my car keys.
Angus had just rewound the tape, so that Taylor could see herself again. “I’m going to make a quick trip to the university,” I said. “There’s something I have to check on.”
“What’s up? You haven’t even finished supper.”
“Just stick it in the fridge for me, will you, Angus? I’ll get it later.”
Taylor was wholly absorbed in watching herself, but my son was on his feet. “You look kind of weird. Is everything okay?”
Eli, always sensitive to problems, shifted position so he could check out the situation as well.
I took in their worried faces and decided against setting off any alarms. “Just university politics,” I said. “A problem involving a couple of colleagues.”
Angus grinned. “I’ll bet you a loonie that one of them is Dr. Coyle.”
“You lose,” I said.
Ten minutes later, as I pulled off the Parkway, I thought I’d give a bag full of loonies to see Kevin’s old boat of a Buick in its usual spot. My bank account was safe; the parking lot was deserted. I was deflated but not surprised. It was a gentle Friday night in spring. There was no reason for anyone to be at the university. But when I walked towards the main door of College West, I saw that someone was. A solitary bike was chained to the rack. The apprehension that had been shadowing me like the black cloud over the head of Joe Bfstplk in the old “Li’l Abner” cartoons deepened. I wasn’t an expert on bikes, but I knew this one. It was Solange’s Trek WSD.
I began to run. My footfalls echoed as I padded down the empty corridors and through the silent halls. When I got to the Classroom Building, I decided against taking the elevator. It had been unpredictable all week, and I couldn’t do much for Solange if I was trapped between floors. I raced up the stairs. By the time I got to the third floor, my heart was thumping harder than it had when I’d completed my triumphant skipping exhibition. This time there was no applause.
I went straight to Solange’s office and began pounding at her door. “It’s Joanne, Solange. Let me in.” There was no response, then, very faintly, a sound halfway between a moan and a cry. I tried the door. It was locked. I put my mouth to the door edge. “It’s going to be all right,” I said. “I’m getting help.” Then I ran to my office to call for an ambulance.
I couldn’t seem to get the key to catch. Finally, its teeth gripped the lock and the door opened. I rushed to my desk and reached across to pick up the phone. My back was to the door. An arm shot past me from behind. The knife was at my throat before I had time to be afraid. And that was a blessing, because the person holding the knife was shaking so violently it seemed possible she might sever my throat accidentally. It would have been a Sam Peckinpah death: stupid and brutal. Oddly, the sheer craziness of that image calmed me enough to think about my next step. I knew that I had to slow my assailant’s rhythm to match my own. The question was, How? I managed to inhale; the scent of Pears soap, so familiar and so reassuring, gave me the answer. My best hope lay in a pattern of behaviour Livia herself had perfected. Ed Mariani had always called it coercion by compassion, and at the moment it was the only game in town.
“This must be a nightmare for you,” I said.
Livia shivered and I felt the cool brush of silk against my bare arm. From the corner of my eye, I saw that she was wearing the poppy shawl that had been Ariel’s parting gift to her.
“It is.” Livia’s dreamy New Age nuances made her sound like a woman in a trance. The woman whose byword was “No Surprises” had been surprised once too often. “No one ever comes to the office on a Friday night in the spring,” she said.
“Everything’s going wrong,” I said. “And all you ever wanted was to do what was best for everybody.”
“That’s right,” she agreed. “And that meant I had to start with myself. I needed to regenerate, to stop allowing experiences from the past to intrude on new relationships. I had to learn to trust again, and that was hard because…”
“Because your husband had betrayed you.”
“Kenneth almost destroyed me,” she said.
“But Ariel gave you a chance to begin again.”
“Our relationship was not parasitic, it was symbiotic. I could give Ariel the things she needed, too: a place to regenerate, a mentor who would foster her personal growth. From the first night we talked at Saltspring, I knew she belonged in our department. Having her here was worth every risk.” Suddenly, Livia tensed. “There was never anything sexual, you know.”
“That never even occurred to me,” I said. “I knew you were just two women being loving and supportive.”
