Deadly Appearances (25 page)

I put a blanket over the woman sleeping on the bed and slipped the picture into my bag.

Then I walked down the stairs, through Lane’s life, from the drunken, lonely woman passed out on the bed, to the widow, the wife, the bride, the shining figure skater. Somehow, I thought, as I opened the front door and stepped into the fresh air, Lane Appleby’s life seemed better when you looked at it backward.

Barbara Bryant answered on the first ring. “Jo, this is uncharacteristically sentimental of you. Or are you calling to see if the dogs are lonely?”

It was tonic to hear her voice. “No, I trust you to keep them reassured, but I need a favour, Barb. Would you mind going next door to the granny flat and getting a picture that’s in a file there and sending it to me here?”

“As that odious toad across the street says, ‘No problem.’ ”

“Great. The key is in the window box.”

“Trust you, Jo. Never the obvious.”

“Well, you won’t have any trouble finding it, anyway. The picture I want is in a vertical file marked 1950. It’s Andy’s first communion picture. You can’t miss it.”

“Jo, speaking of the granny flat, there were some guys out there today from –” There was a crash and a howl. Then Barbara’s voice again, good-natured and resigned. “Sam just fell off his rocking horse. Have a great Thanksgiving. Sam and I’ll drive the picture out to the airport right now. The ride will take his mind off his injuries. The picture should be there by late this afternoon.”

“Barbara, thanks, I’ll do it for you someday. And happy Thanksgiving.”

I drove straight to Lane Appleby’s from the airport. I had the two pictures in my purse, and they confirmed what I had felt from the moment Roma Boychuk spit in Lane’s face the day Andy died. I knew that if I called Lane would put me off, and I was growing bored with her self-indulgence. Two good men had died, a broken woman I felt was innocent was in the correctional centre, and that might not be the end of it. I wasn’t sure where this piece fit, but I knew that at this point I couldn’t afford to set anything aside out of delicacy.

She answered the door herself. That was the first surprise. She was sober. That was the second surprise.

“Lane, I’m coming in,” I said. “I have something to give you.”

She must have felt like hell, but she gave me a smile and threw open the door. She led me through the dining room to her little sitting room. There was a fire warm and welcoming in the grate and a fresh bowl of freesias in the centre of the table.

“This time really is drink time,” she said. She was pale but she was game. When she alluded to the adventure of the morning she tried another smile. “I think we have almost everything. I’m having tea, if you’d like that?”

“Tea would be fine.”

Her hands were shaking when she poured but this time she hit the cup. “Mrs. Kilbourn – Joanne – I’d like to explain about this morning.”

“Lane, believe me, that’s the least of my concerns. Since Andy’s death and then Soren’s, things seem to be spinning out of control. I need your help. I can’t force you to get involved, but I can tell you that if you know anything about any of this I think you have an obligation to tell someone.” I fished into my bag, pulled out the two photos and set them side by side on the table. The frames of both pictures were silver. Hers was oval, chased with a little flowery pattern; his was plain silver, heavier and square. But the church steps in the pictures were the same and the bishop was the same, although clearly younger in Lane’s communion picture. Andy had joked once or twice about being the child of his mother’s withered loins. Roma must have been much younger when Lane was born.

Lane’s reaction surprised me. She took my theft of her picture without comment, but there was a sharp intake of her breath as she saw the picture of Andy. When she picked it up to look at it more closely, the light from the fire warmed the picture’s silver frame.

It was, I thought, the right moment to ask my question. “Lane, Andy was your brother, wasn’t he?”

She looked up, surprised. The look on her face was the same as the look on Eve’s face the day in Disciples when she told me I didn’t know the first thing about Andy. Lane leaned toward me. I could smell tobacco and perfume. Her voice was husky.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong, Nancy Drew. Andy Boychuk was my son.”

It was a familiar story: the pretty young girl and the favourite uncle – Roma’s brother. “I thought,” said Lane, “that when she found out she’d be on my side, that she would kill him, but it was me she wanted to kill.” She raised her voice in an uncanny imitation of her mother’s. “ ‘Slut. Whore. It’s always the girl’s fault, Elena. My brother Sid is a good man. You threw yourself at him. Scum. Streetwalker.’ “Lane laughed throatily. “Mother love. She took the baby, of course. ‘The innocent baby, may he never know his mother, the whore.’ Well, you get the idea.”

She lit a Camel and inhaled deeply. “Charlie knew, but not until years after we were married. Oh, God, the guilt. And when I finally told him, he was so sweet. He said, ‘Well, Lane, what d’ya want to do?’

“I had this great scheme, straight out of a Bette Davis movie. I was going to go to Andy and tell him he wasn’t the son of some little babba out by the railroad tracks. He was Lane and Charlie Appleby’s son. The son of rich people who could do anything for him. And, of course, he would fall down on his knees at this amazing news.” She laughed. “And my mother would see the error of her ways and repent. Or she’d die. And either way we’d all live happily ever after.”

The ash fell off her cigarette onto the perfect carpet. She didn’t miss a beat. “But I made the mistake of asking Charlie what he thought I should do.” Her eyes grew dreamy. “Do you know what he said? He said, ‘Lane, honey, let the guy be and let you be. If you want to do something monetarily, we’ll find a way to do it incognito. Enough money to smooth the way without upsetting the apple cart.’ “That’s what Charlie thought was best and that’s what he did – we did. Charlie’s lawyer knew Howard Dowhanuik, and he handled it from the time Andy was eighteen. And it was always” – she smiled sadly – “incognito.”

“But you saw Andy,” I said. “You were at the picnic that day and at the dedication of the prayer centre in Wolf River. I saw you on the tapes.”

“After Charlie died I couldn’t stay away. I had no one. I have no one. I told Howard Dowhanuik, and he suggested I do something at the Pines where Andy’s little boy lives. He said that would give me ‘legitimate access’ to Andy. I don’t know what Howard had in mind, but I was too old to be a candystriper, so I asked Soren Eames what I could do for the college.”

“And the cap Centre was born,” I said.

“The Charlie Appleby Prayer Centre was born,” she corrected gently. “And that’s my involvement.” Her cigarette was still burning in the ashtray, but she lit another. “Now,” she said, “I have a question for you.” Her voice broke. “Who’s doing these things? It isn’t Eve. I’m as certain of that as I am that I was never Barbara Ann Scott. What kind of monster is loose out there?”

When I pulled up in front of the pretty doorway of the house in Tuxedo Park, Peter and Angus were throwing a football around on the lawn with Morton Lee. Collectively, they were wearing enough equipment to get a
CFL
team through the season. Mort was a generous shopper.

It was just before dusk, the time in autumn when suddenly the light fades, the temperature dips and I’m glad I have a place to go home to. When I opened the door, the house smelled of roast beef and pies browning. Somewhere Jussi Björling was singing “O Mimi, tu piu non torni” from
La Bohème
. Rick strode down the hall. He was wearing a huge butcher’s apron and he looked agitated.

“Damn. I thought you were Mort,” and then realizing what he’d said, “Jo, I’m sorry, it’s just that …”

“You wanted him to hear the Björling-Merrill duet from
The Pearl Fishers
– I have this record, too. Go get him.” And so Mort came in, face flushed with cold and exertion, and we three stood and listened to “Au font du temple Saint,” and I thought, Rick was right. It was the most perfect piece of music that’s ever been written. Then we drank Bordeaux and ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and Mort played Ravel’s
Quartet in F
and argued that yes,
The Pearl Fishers
was beautiful, but …

In that civilized house it was easy to forget Eve sitting in a prison hospital cutting out turkeys with cruel little eyes, and Lane Appleby running her perfectly manicured finger around the frame of the picture of her dead son. It was even possible to forget for a while the monster who was loose out there just waiting.

Sunday was damp, but Thanksgiving Day was bright and cool.

“Last chance for the zoo,” Mort said, “Next week it’ll be too cold. Jo, throw that salmon mousse of yours into the oven and let’s go. If we’re going to eat half the stuff that’s cooking around here, we’ll need to work off a few calories.”

At the zoo, Ali and I trailed behind, talking, while Rick and Mort walked with the boys. I hadn’t thought this would be Rick’s kind of outing. In fact, I had doubted he would come. But here he was in his heavy Aran Isle sweater, larger than life and as happy as I’d seen him. He was knowledgeable and he was fun. He made connections between the animals and political people: a huge, lugubrious female baboon was our ex-Minister of Energy; a sleepy, moth-eaten old lion who sprang across his cage in a single bound when someone pelted him with a pebble was, Rick said to me solemnly, “Your ex-Premier, Howard Dowhanuik.”

“What about them?” Angus asked, pointing to some zebras chasing one another skittishly in an open field.

“Glad you asked,” said Rick. “They’re the press gallery. In Ottawa, as in the zebra world, young males not mature enough or aggressive enough to claim a group for themselves or lead a herd live in bachelor groups.” And then, while we were still laughing, he added seriously, “The lion is their principal enemy.”

Dinner was a splendid affair. The table looked like a cover of
Gourmet
. Mort found just the right Moselle to serve with the salmon mousse; the meal from roast turkey to pumpkin pie was as traditional as it was perfect. There was a sense of family at that table, and when Mort drove Rick to the airport to catch the flight to Ottawa, we all felt a sense of loss. It was as if the circle had been broken.

Ali and I went into the kitchen, cleared a place at her oak table, poured coffee and split the last of the pumpkin pie. As we ate, we talked about old times. They hadn’t been good old times, especially at the beginning, but with Ali’s support and love they had become good times and I was, I thought, a happy woman. And it was me, past and present, Ali talked about as we sat in her handsome kitchen with the light dying outside and the good smells of a holiday dinner still hanging in the air.

Her face was serious as she looked at me. “You know, Jo, I think you’ve really put it together this time. When I heard about Andy, I worried that maybe you weren’t strong enough yet to handle another trauma, but here you sit looking wonderful and full of energy, and with a remarkable man in the picture. As your doctor, I’m proud, and as your friend, I’m delighted.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You’re made of good stuff, lady, really good stuff.”

I hugged those words to myself all the way to Regina.

CHAPTER

17

The next morning I woke up in my own bed in the house on Eastlake Avenue. The room was full of light, and as I lay there, I could hear in the distance the mournful cries of geese flying south. I got out of bed, opened the window and curled up in the window seat to watch. The air that came into the room was fresh and cold and smelled of the north. I hugged my knees for warmth and looked out. There were no clouds. The sky was a clear, hard blue. It was a flawless October day.

Suddenly the air was black with geese, hundreds, then thousands of them. Their cries filled the room and, like a tuning fork, a part of me that I had forgotten resonated, responding. It was a pure and shining moment – one of the best and one of the last.

That day it all began to fall apart and, for a while, it looked as if all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put it together again.

Nothing seemed wrong at the beginning. When the dogs and I came back from our morning walk, there was a Canada Messenger truck in front of our house. Two men were unloading boxes. I’d been expecting them. Before we left for Winnipeg, a woman from Supply and Services called and told me there was still a lot of Andy’s stuff (“Boychuk-related material,” she had called it) in a storeroom at the legislature, and they needed the space. They didn’t want to distress Mrs. Boychuk further. (Yes, I thought, the permanently bewildered should be spared something.) Dave Micklejohn had suggested I was working on a book and … Here it was. The machinery of government had been kicked into high gear to clean out a storeroom, and I wasn’t ready.

I signed the invoice and said I’d pay the driver and his helper if they’d carry the boxes up to my office in the granny flat. I hadn’t been in there since I went to Winnipeg, and it was cold. I turned on the heat and paid the men, then I went to the house to warm up. I made a couple of phone calls, so it was after ten by the time I got to the office. I was feeling edgy and frustrated. I hate days that fritter themselves away; this seemed to be shaping up as one of them. And to add to my frustration, there was a fine dusting of pollen over everything: the boxes from the Caucus Office, the desk, window-sills, files. Obviously, the pollen had settled into the heating system all summer long, and when I’d turned on the heat, it had blown out. I tried to ignore the pollen and started to unpack a box of files, but it was getting into everything. I filled a bucket with hot soapy water and washed everything down. By the time I was ready to unpack the government boxes, it was noon, and Angus was home for lunch. As I turned on “The Flintstones” and poured tomato soup into his bowl, I gave myself a little pep talk. “You’ve learned to handle the big stuff, now don’t let the little stuff eat at you.”