“And your name, ma’am.”
Kevin listened, then touched his index finger to his thumb in the circle that indicates success. “Thank you, Mrs. Carruthers, we here at CHJO pride ourselves on our accuracy.” Kevin hung up and shook his head. “It appears Mrs. C didn’t leave her post after all,” he said. “We’ve been had.”
Shania rubbed her buzz thoughtfully. “Sometimes ‘being had’ is instructive. Obviously Mrs. Carruthers didn’t come up with the idea for this wild goose chase on her own. She was acting on someone’s instructions.”
“Whose?” Kevin asked.
“Someone who was willing to throw every member of that household except Caroline to the wolves,” I said.
“Or someone who wanted to make it appear that way,” Shania said.
“ ‘Always walls, always corridors, always doors – and on the other side, still more walls,’ ” I said.
Kevin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Last Year at Marienbad,” he said. “A truly strange adventure in cinema.”
“It was indeed,” I agreed. “And I’d like to stay and talk about it, but I have my own adventure in cinema waiting. Do you two need me here?”
“We like having you here,” Kevin said. “But need is another matter.”
“We’re cool,” Shania said. “We’re just going to discuss logistics and personnel. What movie caught your interest?”
“Another film by Evan MacLeish,” I said. “All I know is the title. It’s called The Glass Coffin.”
“Evocative,” Kevin said. He picked up a biscotti, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and handed it to me. “One for the road,” he said. “And don’t forget to call me with your movie review.”
I drove around Dan’s neighbourhood until I was certain Bryn’s appointment was over. At this point, my relationship with Jill was too precariously poised to risk confrontation. When my watch indicated that it was five minutes to the hour, I thought I was safe.
Dan was in his backyard scooping sunflower seeds into one of his bird feeders. He acknowledged my presence with a wave of his scoop and kept filling the feeder with seeds. “The house finches love these,” he said. “They’ve just started coming to Saskatchewan, so I want to make them welcome.”
“They’re lucky they have such a thoughtful provider,” I said.
“Works both ways,” Dan said. “As soon as the angle of the sun is right, the finches begin to sing. They have the most glorious song, and they begin so early – late February or early March. To hear them when there’s still snow on the ground is like a promise from spring.”
Dan closed the bag of seeds and faced me. “You have to talk to Jill,” he said.
“The session went badly?”
“The session didn’t go at all,” he said. “Jill refused to leave Bryn alone with me. I don’t get it. The whole idea was to give Bryn someone she could open up to, but today it was as if Jill was afraid to let Bryn say anything. Understandably, Bryn was upset at Jill’s interference. She’d brought along this journal she’d started, and she was anxious to talk about what she’d written.”
“But Jill wouldn’t let her?”
“No,” he said. “I suggested Jill come into the house to resolve the problem, and as soon as we were alone, she fired me.”
“I don’t know what to say, Dan – except to apologize. You’ve gone out of your way to help us.” I looked at him carefully. “You are aware that this is no reflection on you.”
Dan nodded. “My ego will survive,” he said. “It’s Bryn I’m concerned about.”
“I’m concerned about everybody and everything,” I said. “And I haven’t a clue about what, if anything, I should do next.”
“Do you want to talk about it? I still have a couple more minutes before my next appointment.”
“Okay, I guess I should start by saying that Jill would not be happy to see me here.”
“She doesn’t want you talking to me?”
“She doesn’t want anybody talking about Bryn – she wants Kevin to shut down his investigation; she wants you to stop Bryn’s therapy; and she’s offered Claudia and Tracy pretty much whatever they want if they’ll agree to keep spinning stories that will protect Bryn.”
“From what?” Dan asked. “The biggest threat to Bryn is herself.”
“Jill doesn’t see it that way. She thinks that if people start delving too deeply into Evan MacLeish’s murder, they might find something that will connect Bryn to it.”
“Does Jill really believe Bryn killed her father?” Dan’s words formed little clouds in the frigid air.
“I think she doesn’t want to risk knowing the truth,” I said.
“And she’s prepared to build a life on not knowing.” Dan said. “That surprises me. Jill struck me as someone who would want to know everything.”
“As a rule she does, but she’s also a human being, and as you once told me, that means being ‘fallible, fucked up, and full of frailty.’ ”
Dan grinned. “The world according to Albert Ellis,” he said.
“There are worse teachers,” I said.
“Yeah,” Dan agreed. “There are.”
A teenaged boy in an army surplus winter jacket came around the corner. “Hey, Dan,” he shouted. “Notice that I’m right on time for once.”
Dan gave the boy the high sign. “I’m impressed,” he said. “Let’s get rolling.” Dan turned back to me. “I’ll keep eight tomorrow open for Bryn. Bring her yourself if you have to.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Dan, I’d like to go inside and check out some of the films that came from Evan’s office. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Stay as long as you like,” he said. “You won’t be in my way. I have back-to-back appointments all morning.”
Even the warmth of Dan’s welcoming home couldn’t dispel the chill I felt when I contemplated Jill’s future. The night of the rehearsal dinner, as Jill stood between Angus’s torches, swathed in the soft folds of her timeless velvet cloak, it seemed she had finally gotten it right. In that incandescent moment, everything seemed possible for her. Now it was clear that no matter what Jill did, her story wouldn’t end with “happily ever after.”
As I came into the living room, I was overwhelmed with despair. For days, I’d been fuelled by adrenaline, responding to the unimaginable, reacting, deciding, hoping against hope. Now the heart had gone out of me. I was sick of tragedy and death. In the words of the old Spirit of the West song, all I wanted was to turn my head and walk, walk away.
But if the last days had taught me anything it was that, wherever I walked, trouble would follow.
I sank to my knees and began hunting through one of the boxes of tapes that had been sent from Evan’s office in Toronto. My search was perfunctory, but The Glass Coffin wasn’t hard to spot. The other tapes were obviously works-in-progress with titles and dates hand-printed on their spines. The Glass Coffin was in a paper sleeve with the name and address of a film and video processing company printed on the box and a computerized label describing the box’s contents: The Unblinking Eye: The Glass Coffin, Seamless Master, Length: 44.58 minutes. (Textless @ Tail), Ch I
2: Stereo Mix. There were other notations, too cryptic for me, but I knew at once I’d found the tape Evan had sold to the network.
I put it in the machine and pressed play. In seconds, the room was filled with the hauntingly elegiac “Pavanne for a Dead Princess” by Maurice Ravel. On screen, the ruffled deep-mauve petals of a perfect rose bloomed slowly in the soft morning light. A woman began to speak. “Even their names are beautiful,” she said. “Shropshire Lad, Abellard, Cajun Dancer, Gabriel’s Fire, Dakota, Black Magic, Callisto, Natasha Monet, Flamingo, Cachet, Cadenza, Hand in Hand, Lasting Peace.” The camera pulled back, revealing as it moved a fairy-tale profusion of roses in the extravagantly gorgeous hues of early summer: deep rose, soft pink, apricot, lemon, pale peach, cream, burgundy, magenta. As the distance between the camera and the roses increased, the vibrant life of the garden ebbed, making the petals seem less a product of nature than of an artist’s broken brushwork.
The woman’s seductive contralto continued. “It’s been forty years since I felt the sun like a hand on my back as I bent to the earth; forty years since I knew that numinous moment when the scent of growing roses perfumes the air. For forty years, I’ve watched the world from behind a wall of glass.”
