Alex hesitated before responding; when he did, it was clear he had decided to push my buttons. “It’s evidence,” he said. “A conscientious citizen told us we might find something helpful to our case here, and sure enough we did.” He looked hard at me. “What’s the matter, Jo? You seem a little shaken.”
“Just concerned about my neighbourhood. I hope your people are planning to clean up this alley – kids play out here.”
“Unlike civilians, we don’t leave messes we’re not prepared to clean up,” Alex said. Then he turned to Angus, and his voice grew gentle. “Could I have a minute with you?” he asked.
“Sure,” Angus said.
“Bryn and I will go back to the house,” I said. “You can catch up with us.”
We were barely out of earshot when Bryn pulled me close. “Was that my aunt’s pill bottle they found?”
“We can talk about it inside,” I said.
Bryn was relentless. As soon as we stepped through the kitchen door, she turned to me. “So was it hers?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m guessing it was.”
“Then she killed Mr. Leventhal?”
“Bryn, what do you know about the way Mr. Leventhal died?”
“Enough,” she said. “There’s not a lot that happens I don’t know.” Her eyes were glittering and her cheeks were pink. She seemed almost feverish with anticipation. “So do you think the police will arrest her?”
“If it’s Tracy’s prescription bottle, they’ll certainly want to talk to her.”
Bryn seemed oddly gratified. “Then they’ll stop thinking it was Jill,” she said and added, as if to herself, “It was a lucky thing the police were out there.”
“Lucky for who?” I said.
She looked incredulous. “For Jill and me.” She stifled a yawn. “I’m really tired. Angus and I are going shopping tomorrow morning, so I’d better get some sleep.” Suddenly, she remembered her manners. “Thank you very much for the nice evening,” she said.
I was still reeling when Angus came in.
“Everything okay here?” he asked.
“Couldn’t be better,” I said. “Bryn had a nice evening and she’s gone to bed.”
“She wants to go shopping tomorrow,” he said.
“She mentioned that,” I said. “What did Alex want?”
Angus unzipped his jacket and turned away. “He just wanted to say Merry Christmas. He’s still a great guy, Mum. He taught me how to drive. He taught me a lot of stuff. I always kind of thought you two would end up together.”
“For a while, we kind of thought the same thing,” I said. “But it’s not going to happen, Angus. It’s over.”
My son gave me a bear hug. “Well, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “It was fun.”
Suddenly alone, I moved to the glass doors that overlooked the alley where Alex was supervising the search for evidence. Despite everything that had gone wrong between us, I still felt connected to him, and I longed to tell him it was time he came in from the cold. If, as Nadine Gordimer says, human contact is as random and fleeting as the flash of fireflies in the darkness, Alex and I had made the most of our moments. Hands joined as we sat at the symphony listening to Mozart; heads bent towards one another as we played killer Scrabble in front of the fireplace; bodies touching as we lay on the sand at the lake, our books forgotten, listening to the pounding of the waves and thinking ahead to the possibilities of the old couch on the screened porch, we had always been smart enough to know we were happy. But at some level beyond the reach of reason, we had both known that our firefly moments were numbered.
My encounter with Alex might have provided conclusive proof that our relationship was over, but it had also raised some unsettling questions that had nothing to do with our personal relationship. I would have bet the farm that the prescription bottle in the dumpster had belonged to Tracy Lowell, but how it had made its way from her room at the Hotel Saskatchewan to my back alley was a mystery. The identity of the helpful citizen who had called the police tip-line was less enigmatic. Bryn was both fastidious and self-involved; yet she had stood in the cold with me watching a police officer paw through garbage until he came up with exhibit A.
A cynic might conclude that she had known all along that he would find what he was looking for.
CHAPTER
8
On a normal day, few things gave me as much pleasure as dialling my daughter’s number and waiting to hear her voice. On the morning of December 24, I dreaded making the call. Since Thanksgiving, we had been making plans to spend the holiday together in Saskatoon. After the birth of my granddaughter, Madeleine, we had made the trip to Saskatoon at least one weekend a month, and Mieka and Greg had put more than a few kilometres on their Volvo wagon coming to see us. We were a family that enjoyed one another’s company, and we had all been counting the days till Christmas. I’d been ready for two weeks: presents wrapped, stocking stuffers bagged, casseroles frozen, but once again Robbie Burns was right on the money, and the best laid plans of mice and men had “gang agley.” Given the fact that the police had told Jill, Tracy, Claudia, and Bryn to stay in Regina until further notice, there was no way I could leave Jill alone at Christmas.
When I broke the news, Mieka erupted in tears, but, as she pointed out between sobs, she was eight and a half months’ pregnant with her second child, hormonally driven, and not her best self. She was, however, cheerful and pragmatic by nature and that morning we rejigged and rescheduled most of our plans within five minutes. By the time Jill walked into the kitchen, Mieka and I were reassuring one another that, whenever we got around to celebrating it, this would be the best Christmas ever.
Jill was frowning when I hung up. “Sounds like you were bailing on Mieka,” she said.
“Not bailing, just shifting things around a little.”
“Because of me,” Jill said.
“Yes,” I said. “But the decision has been made, so live with it. ‘All will be well,’ as my yoga teacher says. Speaking of transcendence, you’re looking more like your old self this morning.”
“Actually,” Jill said. “I’m feeling not bad. I had a good night’s sleep, and when I stepped on your scales, I discovered I’d lost three pounds.”
“Every cloud has a rainbow,” I said.
Jill smiled. “Are you sure you’re okay about not being with your incomparable granddaughter and her parents tomorrow?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “We’ll have two Christmases: Taylor and Madeleine will be surfing the bliss wave. My only problem now is poultry. I’m trying to think of a butcher who would still have a fresh turkey big enough for all of us.”
“Problem solved,” Jill said. “I’ll take care of dinner. We’ll eat at the Saskatchewan. These old railway hotels really know how to do holidays. I brought this not so merry band into your life, the least I can do is feed everybody.”
“The hotel will cost you,” I said.
Jill sliced a bagel and popped it in the toaster. “At 5:00 p.m. last night, I became a woman who will never have to worry about money again.”
“Evan made that much from his movies?”
“Nobody gets rich making movies,” Jill said. “Evan inherited money, and he played the market. Luckily for me, unlike his sister, my husband knew when to hold them and when to fold them.”
“Claudia is a woman with money worries?”
“Big-time, but she’s not paying for dinner.”
“In that case, the Kilbourns accept your invitation with pleasure. Taylor will be thrilled that she gets to wear her swooshy dress again.”
